Top Tips For New Math Teachers
Over the years I received a lot of teaching tips from veteran colleagues. One practical teaching tip was don’t grade everything. I don’t know what made me think I could grade every practice problem, handout, or homework assignment. I was burning out my first year.
Now that I’m a veteran teacher, it is my turn to share some effective math teaching tips and advice for new teachers and student teachers.
Teacher in the classroom
BUILD YOUR STUDENTS’ CONFIDENCE
Adults, students, and even other educators love to say math is hard. Our students hear it so much that they believe it. We need to motivate and build their confidence in math. Praise their effort for trying, even if they make mistakes. Ease them into higher-level problems before they work independently. Students with mathematical confidence are willing to work on challenging problems until they figure them out.
HAVE THE EXEMPLAR READY
Notice I said the exemplar and not just the answer key. Teaching math is more than making sure students are getting the right answer, we need to know how they got their answer or where they made an error. So, if you require your students to show certain strategies, like CUBES, then your exemplar needs to show that as well. Your answer key should show your work as if you were a student. This will prevent mistakes on your end and catch student mistakes.
Picture of a teacher’s math exemplar for adding polynomials
USE COLOR
When writing on the whiteboard, use color to show your thinking process or for organizing your thoughts. I love creating colorful anchor charts in the classroom.
Simplifying Expressions Anchor Chart
REST WHEN POSSIBLE
Teaching is hard work, so prioritizing rest is vital. To help, I posted ten ways educators can practice self-care here
USE A PROBLEM-SOLVING STRATEGY FOR WORD PROBLEMS
Not only do students have negative feelings about math, but they despise word problems. They don’t know where to start. I am a fan of CUBES, but there are other strategies as well. The CUBES strategy is a tool that teachers use to break down word problems. CUBES is an acronym that gives the students 5 steps to tackle math word problems.
C – Circle the numbers
U – Underline the question
B – Box in keywords
E – Evaluate and eliminate unnecessary information
S – Solve
The reason why I use this strategy in Algebra 2 is that it gives the students a start and tells them what to do.
INCORPORATE WRITING IN MATH
Writing in math is an underused but effective teaching strategy. One reason why is when students write in math, we can identify misconceptions. Students can go through motions and solve a problem correctly or select the correct multiple-choice answer, but do they really know the concept? For example, I taught my students how to simplify expressions with exponents. However, when I asked them, “How do you know when you are done simplifying?”, I got all kinds of different answers. That let me know that I needed to explain a little more before moving on.
I hope that you find these strategies useful.
If you have additional pieces of advice or other math teaching strategies, feel free to put them in the comment section.
If you like this post, I would love for you to join my collaborative and supportive Facebook group.
By joining this community you will gain:
Access to a closed community group in which you can ask questions, collaborate, and share sensitive information in confidence.
Support and encouragement
Teacher hacks to make your life easier.
