Why is mathematics instruction so difficult, scary even, to some students… and teachers? Is it because of a lack of confidence? Is it because you haven’t received adequate instruction? Or maybe because you only have a surface understanding of mathematical concepts and not a deep understanding of how to explain math to someone else? Whatever the reason, it is time to become a math teacher—a teacher of math! Enjoy math as some of your colleagues do and help and encourage the same from your students!! We will begin a series of articles for next school year regarding math and math instruction! Here are some tidbits to start!

–  What constitutes effective instruction in algebra? (Gersten, Clarke, & Witzel, 2008)  Model approaches to solve problems (using teacher and student think alouds), sequence examples that asks students to discriminate problem types, include frequent practice and review, integrate word problems and computation, use visuals and planned sequence of representations.

–  Recommendation from the IES RtI Math Panel (Gersten, et al, 2009) When teaching math that is new or difficult, instruction should be explicit and systematic. This includes providing models of proficient problem solving, verbalization of thought processes, guided practice, corrective feedback, and frequent cumulative review.

–  Studies showed that when faced with multistep problems, students frequently attempted to solve the problems by randomly combining numbers instead of implementing a solution strategy step by step. The process of encouraging students to verbalize their thinking—by talking, writing, or drawing the steps they used in solving a problem—was consistently effective.” (NCTM Research Brief, p.2)