Resources mentioned in this episode:

Fawn Nguyen’s daily math tasks

Build Math Minds Free Trainings

Welcome fellow Recovering Traditionalists to Episode 54.  Today I’m giving you Free Resources.

Welcome to Build Math Minds the podcast, where fidelity to your students is greater than fidelity to your textbook. I’m your host, Christina Tondevold, the recovering traditionalist and BuildMathMinds.com Founder, where my mission is to change the way we teach elementary math to our kiddos. Are you ready to start building math minds and not just creating calculators? Let’s get started.

So during this wild and crazy time of school closures, I have been unsure about the next steps of how to help you because my philosophy has always been that I am not about providing you resources. There’s an over abundance of resources out there of activities and lessons.  Here at Build Math Minds it’s always been about changing the way that we think about mathematics. Building our understanding of how children learn mathematics so that we can analyze and evaluate those resources to decide what’s good, what’s bad, what’s the best thing for my students at the point they are right now? And during this time, we are dealing with the Coronavirus and now we have no students in our classrooms and we’re trying to help parents be able to continue learning at home.

Here at Build Math Minds, I don’t have activities that you can give to parents because that’s never been what Build Math Minds is about. But I know that that is what you need right now. And as you know, here at Build Math Minds, I am not a fan of worksheets and packets. But you know what, during this time we are just doing the best that we can. And so I don’t want to judge people for anything that was sent home because we were given very short notice. And so you really are just doing what you can to help out parents.

So I am going to share a couple resources with you. One of them is what I have created and another one is someone else has created. So because I don’t provide math activities, I have been watching what’s been posted out there and what people are doing. And there are tons of people sharing what they’re doing, which is amazing. But it’s also hard to kind of sort through.

Well, I found a document that Fawn Nguyen has put together and I have followed her for years and I just love everything that she does. So in the show notes page, which will be buildmathminds.com/54, I will link to the document that she has put together and it’s an ever changing living document because she is putting together tasks for every grade level, kindergarten through eighth grade, every single day. So like Monday through Friday, not the weekends. But she is compiling these and they are great tasks. They’re wonderful tasks that would be great to use in your classroom, but also great ones that you can give to parents. And the thing I love about it is that it’s not like 50 problems. It’s a few problems every day. Four to six problems every single day. And that’s something that is doable for parents.

And as a parent of four kids at home, I can tell you it’s very overwhelming to think that we have to now teach every single subject just like you guys did, but without a background. Now I am an educator so it’s a little bit easier for me, but I try to think of all of those parents who don’t have that background and how overwhelming it can be. So the more simple we can make it the better. And that’s one of the things I love about Fawn’s document. So I’m going to link to that if you are looking for activities for you to use or to be able to send to parents.

The other thing I’m going to link to is resources that I put together. You can find those at buildmathminds.com/resources but again I will link to it at the show notes page, buildmathminds.com/54. 

Basically it is a compilation of trainings about the best ways to be building mathematical thinking for students. And I tried to pick ones that would be appropriate, whether you’re in the classroom teaching, like you can watch these now and think about things that you might want to do when you get the kiddos back. But also ones that would be helpful for parents at home.

So these are trainings that I’ve done through my vlog, but they’re also trainings that other people did for the virtual math summit that are usually only available inside of Build Math Minds PD site for our members. And there’s also ones that I pulled from inside of the membership site that only our members have ever had access to and I put those onto this page for you to be able to watch. So it’s all free. You don’t have to put in your email address or anything. I wanted to make it very easy for you to share out to parents and to other colleagues who might be interested in learning this information during this time. So again, you can go to buildmathminds.com/resources to watch those trainings. But again, I will put that at the show notes page, which is buildmathminds.com/54.

I want to end this podcast with just a reminder that you are doing the best that you can in this circumstance and so are the parents. Let’s give everyone grace during this time, everyone is overwhelmed and unsure about what the next best step is and there really isn’t a next best step. It’s just take a step, try something, you’re going to realize that wasn’t the best thing to do and it’s just like in the classroom we try something and then we realize that’s not working right and we’re going to adjust because that’s what educators do best. You guys are awesome out there. Keep up the great work and if you need anything during this time, please feel free to reach out and as always my email address is i-n-f-o@buildmathmindsdotcom. So reach out with anything that we can do to help you out.

If you like what you have been hearing there are a few ways I would love for you to let me know.  The first way is to subscribe to the podcast. If you are listening in iTunes make sure to hit that subscribe button.  Also in iTunes I would love for you to leave a review and let me know if you are enjoying the podcast which types of episodes are your favorite.  Really just anything to get me feedback about the show and lastly if you are on Instagram or Twitter I would love for you to share when you listen to an episode that you love.  Make sure you tag me @buildmathminds and all of those are the ways to let me know that there are actually people out there listening.  Thank you so much for letting me be a small part of your math journey.

Subscribe and Review in iTunes

Hey, are you subscribed to the Build Math Minds Podcast, yet? If you’re not, make sure to do that today because I don’t want you to miss any episodes! Click here to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

While you’re there, don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes too. I would love to know your thoughts and how we can make sure that we give you content that you will really enjoy.

To leave a review, head over to iTunes and click on “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review.” I can’t wait to hear your thoughts about the podcast.

Pin This To Pinterest for Later