This session will focus on how the math main idea is the missing piece that bridges the gap for students who struggle to comprehend what they are being asked to figure out in a number story. Teachers will engage in hands on collaborative activities that will enhance their understanding of the math main idea and will participate in turn and talk activities to clarify ideas.
Owner-Structures of Equality, K-5 Math Consultant and Author of The Fire & Wire Way-Daily Routines to Sytematically Build Foundational Number Sense and Structures of Equality-Putting comprenhension first: A framework for teaching word problems (release date summer 2026)
Friday November 6, 2026 9:50am - 10:50am EST Salem 3B
Explore how schools are moving beyond one-size-fits-all instruction toward a more personalized approach to math learning. In this session, you’ll discover strategies for combining core instruction, differentiation, assessment, and real-time data to better support every learner and drive stronger student outcomes.
What happens when we stop rescuing students and start building perseverance? In this interactive session, participants will tackle a rich math task, explore powerful questioning strategies, and experience how productive struggle transforms student thinking, engagement, and ownership in the math classroom.
What happens after the data meeting ends? This session invites educators to tinker together with student data to move from results to responsive instruction. Participants use a 4 Square Data Dig Protocol to analyze student thinking, identify misconceptions, and guide instructional moves while engaging students in making sense of their own errors.
Teachers will engage in student-facing fraction tasks that deepen understanding of elementary fraction concepts using multiple representations, visual models, and collaborative problem solving. Drawing on outcomes from 70+ teacher participants in Carnegie Learning’s 30-hour Patterns course, this session highlights how rich fraction experiences strengthen reasoning about magnitude and equivalence.
Discover how to boost engagement and deepen mathematical thinking through purposeful games in K–5 classrooms. This session explores strategies for using games to build fluency, problem-solving, and collaboration—turning practice into meaningful, motivating learning experiences for all students.
Explore how music and visual arts can transform K–5 math warm-ups into engaging learning experiences. Participants will experience arts-integrated routines aligned to elementary math standards that promote creativity, discourse, representation, and problem-solving. Attendees will leave with classroom-ready activities that build mathematical thinking through music, visual art, and collaboration.
Participants will explore place value through a hands-on base 5 lesson designed to mirror the experience of students learning mathematics for the first time. Through modeling, discourse, and problem solving, participants will reflect on productive struggle and examine concrete strategies, representations, and instructional routines that strengthen place value understanding in the base 10 system.
Participants will hands‑on tinker with manipulatives to intentionally build incorrect solutions, record and categorize those error models, and analyze the class “data” to surface common misconception patterns. Through guided discussion and quick routines, teachers practice facilitation moves and leave with ready prompts, and corrective reasoning strategies to use tomorrow.
Discover how math games act as the ultimate "tinkering" tools. This session explores how hands-on games raise the bar for mathematical communication. Dive into ready-to-use activities that boost mental math, foster peer-to-peer discourse, and turn skill practice into a playful, collaborative exploration.
Explore how the Concrete–Representational–Abstract (C-R-A) framework helps students build deep mathematical understanding through hands-on exploration, visual models, and symbolic reasoning. Participants will engage in grade-band tasks while exploring strategies that promote reasoning, discourse, equitable access, and meaningful student thinking in mathematics.
Engage in memorable, hands-on activities that integrate math with age-appropriate geography and ecology to learn more about our human footprint on the Earth and its resources. Build students’ skills in working with fractions, ratios, large numbers, growth patterns, measurement, and graphing using real-world data. Receive electronic lesson plans matched to state standards.
This interactive session explores differences between place-naming (e.g., identifying the digit in the 'thousands place') and true place value undersatnding. Together we will consider ways to better assess students' understanding of the relationships between units within our number system. Attendees will leave with practical strategies and ready-to-use routines for the classroom.
Doctoral Candidate/Graduate Assistant, North Carolina State University
Tacey is a current doctoral candidate at NC State University. Her current research interests include instructional routines, number sense, and numerical magnitude.
Friday November 6, 2026 1:20pm - 2:20pm EST Salem 1C
Learn how to make student thinking visible in your classroom. A balanced math curriculum includes opportunities for students to apply prior knowledge to solve real-world problems. Join us to explore how open-middle and low-floor, high-ceiling tasks in Eureka Math² spark curiosity, promote reasoning, and encourage discourse.
Participants will engage in the Building Thinking Classrooms model as outlined by author Peter Liljedahl in his book Randomized groups will solve problems on non-permanent vertical spaces and a synthesis of mathematical strategies and participant observations will follow. Student created rubrics, authentic note taking, and check your understanding methods will also be presented.
