The start of the school year is always a whirlwind, full of energy, anticipation, and new beginnings. As educators, we know that what happens in these first few weeks sets the tone for the months ahead. To support you in starting strong, the Open Up Resources team has pulled together 5 key tips for math teachers, whether you’re brand-new to our curriculum or in your fifth year of implementation. Explore each tip and find helpful links below!

1. Set Expectations for Not Just Students, but the Community.

Establishing classroom math norms is important. We ask students to make commitments, to describe what it looks like to be responsible and respectful, and together we define structures like partner work. But, how often do we elicit feedback from students on what they expect from us? In addition to co-creating student norms, we can intentionally co-create teacher norms. What does it look like for everyone in the room to be “doing math?” What do learners want adults to be aware of and accountable for? The Open Up Resources K–5 Math curriculum suggests a structure for building these shared math community norms where the teacher’s role is explicitly included – take a look!

2. Make Students’ Identities Visible. 

We need to get to know our students for a successful start to the year. Give children personal surveys, play games, chat with them at lunch, or visit homes. Once we’ve learned more about students and who they are as humans, a powerful next step is to make their unique identities visible in the mathematics classroom. For example, represent multilingual students’ languages on visual displays and encourage them to use their native languages in math discussions. Instead of a perfectly neat, teacher-created bulletin board, allow students to cover a wall with family photos, selfies, drawings, or favorite music lyrics. Last but definitely not least, find small ways in math lessons to tie in students’ cultures, interests, and lived experiences.  

3. Launch Discourse with Easy-to-Use MLRs

Sometimes in math class, and especially towards the beginning of the year, we prompt students to collaborate or explain ideas, and they are unsure of how to start and sustain a conversation. The Mathematical Language Routines (MLRs) are structured, but adaptable, routines that promote discourse, language development, and deeper understanding of math concepts. There are eight of these routines (they’re all amazing), but don’t feel pressured to become experts in every single one right away! Here are two easy-to-use MLRs that we would recommend: 

• MLR8: Discussion Supports – This list of teacher moves can be used in combination and at any point throughout a lesson to optimize student output and support with sense-making. Have students revoice peers’ strategies, facilitate turn and talks, provide open-ended sentence stems, and show concepts multimodally with images, videos, realia, and body gestures. 
• MLR2: Collect & Display – Keep important mathematical and informal language on display for students to reference. Anchor charts are a critical tool for students across grades – this isn’t an “elementary” thing! Visit Open Up Resources Director of Professional Learning, Morgan Stipe’s blog to learn about the working, growing anchor chart that she displayed in her middle school math classroom. 

4. Model Mistakes.

True mathematics learning happens when students take risks, make mistakes, and persevere to solve problems. We can’t expect children to make mistakes if we don’t model making mistakes ourselves! Don’t be afraid to admit when you don’t know something or to pause a messy lesson in the moment to reflect with your students. Tell children to double-check your work and embrace errors and challenges as learning opportunities.  

5. Empower Families & Caretakers. 

Leading a problem-based mathematics classroom is no simple task. Families and caretakers want to be a part of their children’s math learning, and we need them! What we notice in mathematics more than any other content area, though, is a feeling of fear or uncertainty from adults when it comes to supporting their children with math at home. Empower caretakers and help them reframe their math perspectives from the get-go. Acknowledge negative math experiences, engage parents in an Open Up Resources Math Warm-up task, and update them on classroom learning through newsletters or by sharing Open Up Resources K–12 Math family materials. 

Finally, let adults know support doesn’t mean stressing over homework answers. Families and caretakers can support students at home by reminding them to think about strategies from class, by asking them to define and give examples of new math words they’ve learned, and by pointing out math around them in their everyday lives (e.g. cooking, organizing their room, playing video games). 

We hope one or more of these tips resonate with you. We will be cheering you on from the sidelines as you head into another academic year. We look forward to seeing you soon in our free community coach PLCs. 

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