Teaching Math: Grades 4-6

About This Course

Reinvent math instruction for grades 4-6 by bringing hands-on learning, inexpensive manipulatives, and real-world connections into your classroom. Whether you’re a new teacher or a seasoned pro, this course will help you get your students excited about math!

Over the next six weeks, you'll learn the best ways to walk students through the complexities of elementary school math. From teaching them the best way to learn complicated vocabulary to turning them into problem-solving detectives, you'll discover lots of fun and practical ways to extend your students’ learning into their homes, the community, and the world. Whether you end up using clever geometry manipulatives or handmade fraction bars, math journals or Family Math nights, you'll soak up dozens of strategies that require little or no money if you supply a lot of imagination.

If you’ve been waiting to jumpstart your math instruction, now’s the time to double your teaching power without adding a lot of work.

About The Instructor

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Michele Thrailkill.

Michele Thrailkill fell in love with math as a child and has spent the last 10 years of her teaching career making numbers fun for a diverse range of students. Eager to share her easy, inexpensive, and creative teaching strategies with others, Michele worked for a state Department of Education, where she created statewide lesson plans and evaluated Web-based material for classroom inclusion. In her spare time, she published two teachers' manuals focusing on introductory mathematics for preschool and elementary students.

Syllabus

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

Week 1

Wednesday - Lesson 01

Whether you’re a new math teacher or an old pro, this course will help you get your students excited about math! To get started, you need to know what kind of learners you have in class. Visual, auditory, and tactile-kinesthetic students are all going to process your lessons differently. The trick is learning teaching strategies to get everyone up to speed, so that's what we'll talk about here in our first lesson.

Friday - Lesson 02

Today, you're going to find out how to teach your students to talk the talk as they walk the walk in your math classroom. You'll discover five keys to effective vocabulary instruction, and you'll find out how to start using them today.

Week 2

Wednesday - Lesson 03

Ever wonder if your students have any number sense? It’s sometimes tricky for children to understand how 1 relates to 100 or how 100 relates to 1,000. But they won’t be confused much longer if you try the smart tips for number play that we'll go over in this lesson.

Friday - Lesson 04

Is multiplication mastery becoming a bore for your students? In this lesson, you'll learn how to multiply the fun in your classroom with models, facts beyond the tables, and real world applications.

Week 3

Wednesday - Lesson 05

Today we'll step into division, evaluating strategies for teaching the long and short of it. From the grocery store to the baseball game, you'll discover ways to connect division to life outside the classroom. This lesson is packed with a creative punch!

Friday - Lesson 06

Are you ready to halve the work with fractions in your classroom? In this lesson, we’ll look at a variety of manipulatives and models that bring fractions to life. You'll learn how to tell when they’re proper, improper, and mixed numbers so you can teach them like a pro.

Week 4

Wednesday - Lesson 07

Ready, set, solve! Today, I'll show you how to get your young math detectives thinking with some innovative problem-solving strategies. The best part is that you get to bring the whole world into your four walls.

Friday - Lesson 08

Today’s the day to hop a plane with geometry. This topic is a student favorite! You'll learn how to make geometry hands-on and practical within the space of one lesson. As an added bonus, you'll learn how to get your students thinking into the future with some geometric career connections.

Week 5

Wednesday - Lesson 09

You may have already tried cooperative group work in your math classroom, but get ready to polish your approach with today's tips on integrating group work to maximize student learning. Whether you want to use pairs, clusters, or teams, ask your students to pull together for some fun math lessons.

Friday - Lesson 10

It might seem a little funny to break out the composition books in the math classroom, but don’t be surprised that when your students read, write, and talk about math, they're learning multiplies. By getting kids to write, you not only get a sneak peek into their minds, but you can help them embrace the multidisciplinary world around them.

Week 6

Wednesday - Lesson 11

Most students see assessments as red pens and big x marks, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Today, you'll learn the keys of effective performance and traditional assessments that will help you understand how well you’re teaching and how well your students are learning.

Friday - Lesson 12

Are you always looking for ways to involve students’ families in math? From assigning the right homework to designing Family Math Nights that’ll have the whole school talking, you can take the math classroom to students’ homes and bring their families to school with the smart strategies you'll discover in today's lesson

Requirements

Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader).