Do you enjoy teaching math? Are you a numbers guy or gal? I’ve always loved numbers. There was even a time in college when I considered majoring in accounting. Then again, my enhanced interest in numbers at that particular time may have had more to do with a hot guy than with financial ratios, debits, and credits!
Which math skills do you enjoy teaching the most? Which math skills do your students struggle to grasp?
Spill your math beans right here, and we’ll enter your name in our All-About-Math Giveaway. Please include the ages or grade(s) you teach. And be sure to post your comment before midnightEDT, Sunday, April 15. A super-duper math prize pack could be headed your way!
Happily,
Diane
Congratulations to Vanessa! She’s the winner of the math prize pack!
I love teaching math to my 2nd graders. There are so many great games and activities for students to use they never realize their math skills are steadily improving.
Number and Number sense are my favorite skills to teach because it builds a strong foundation.
Telling time on an analog clock is difficult for students – the clocks on activity sheets can look quite different than the famous Judy Clock, plus so many clocks students use are digital!
I teach 4PS to fifth grade special needs. I love that my very low functioning children now understand that numbers go beyond 10!
I don’t LOVE to teach math, but I do LOVE when I can use my “overhead toys” to teach math concepts!! I have pattern blocks, base ten blocks, money, and fractions that make teaching soooo much more fun! I love to expose my Kindergarteners to as much math as possible using my “toys” and they love getting to ‘be the teacher’ and using my “toys” as well!
I love teaching math to my Preschoolers!! My favorite activity to teach is patterning. We try to do patterning in several different manners so the children grasp the concept that we find patterns everyday in all aspects of our lives. The children clap patterns, play follow the leader making patterns and also pattern with different items in the classroom. The children love the pattern worksheets that we use from Mailbox and many times we take the worksheets and modify them into hands on activities with items from the classroom.
The concept I find toughest to teach in Preschool are opposites. Many of the children do not understand and get frustrated. I try to make it fun by doind several hands on activities such as having the children draw a card with the word and a picture such as fire for hot and then having them show me and tell me the opposite such as getting an ice cube from the dramatic play area and telling me cold.
i teach preschoolers so math is fun! We are counting everything we can find!!
I love teaching math. As matter of fact, my minor in college was mathematics. With my preschoolers, we enjoy singing number songs and doing number recognition projects. Last week we glued the number of jellybeans next to the correct number.
Math was always my favorite subject in school and I love teaching it now to my fifth graders! My favorite concept to teach would probably have to be geometry, especially measuring angles with a protractor. My students always have the most difficulty with double digit division. The more we spiral and practice though, the better they feel about it.
I teach Kindergarten! My favorite is addition! I have the students draw a large circle on a piece of paper. They get 10 goldfish. We keep adding the goldfish to the pond. Next, we subtract the goldfish (by eating it!) This is actually the toughest for some of mine to grasp. They love the eating part, but when it comes to putting pencil to paper, they have a very hard time!
I love finding songs and rhymes that help my third graders remember facts, or steps in a process.
The 2’s,3’s,4’s,5’s, and 10’s in multiplication and division are always easy and fun…it’s those 6’s, 7’s, 8’s and 9’s the kids always get stuck on!
Math was never my favorite but since I teach Prek it is not a big issue. I love to use math rhymes/songs and make headbands then use the kids to bring things to life.
This week we are doing 5 Speckled frogs. I add numbers on the frogs for number recognition and of course the frog kids jump into the pond so we are doing subtraction.
I teach 17 K-3rd students in special education. I always loved math as a child. I did well in math right through college. I’ve really had to learn to break things down into small steps for most of my students. I work really hard to change their attitude about math. I think attitude is half the battle. Just like we want our students to love reading, I want them to LOVE math too. I try to use manipulative whenever possible. Most concepts are difficult for my students.
I like teaching addition. I seems to make them feel great when they get it.
I teach 5th grade and I enjoy teaching multiplication because there are so many ways to teach it, but I find division the hardest concept for my students to understand.
I love teaching about the area of circles and complex figures in 5th grade. They are so into relationships right at this age, that I tell them about the diameter and radius being in love with the circle, they both take her out for PI. They get a kick out of it and never mix up the formulas for circumference or area.
PI day is fun, but we take it up a notch with tons of problem solving about donuts, lifesavers, and anything else we can find to calculate. Real life problems come into play as well- IT IS SOOO MUCH FUN!!!
Sometimes I wonder what other people would say when my kids ask, “Is circle going out with radius or diameter today?” They just giggle and end up writing little comic strips with dialogue between the characters. Independent Integration!!
I absolutely love teaching math! It is my favorite subject to teach. I teach 3rd and 4th grade and really look forward to teaching multiplication each year to students. My students love using learning wrap ups to practice their multiplication facts.
I teach preschool, I love to teach math to preschoolers because I like when they have fun with it or use it to solve a problem and therefore know why we have math.
I teach 4th and 5th graders problem solving. So many students see words and they shy away from them. I teach them to read each part separately until they understand it and then go on, and also, that there are numerous ways to solve problems. I love when they get so happy when they understand!
I teach first grade. I love teaching about graphs. We graph our favorite foods, hair color, favorite sport, and so much more. Its so much fun!! My students have a hard time with word problems. Its been one of my goals this year to spend more time on them and make it fun at the same time. 🙂
I love patterns with pre-k students! 🙂
Patterns are so much fun! Students pick them up easily when you incorporate them throughout the day. The students don’t realize that they are doing math! Lining up boy/girl/boy/girl is one of the students’ favorites. 😉
Passing out 3 different colors of linking cubes is also fun. The students take turns coming up to the front to add the color that comes next in the ABC pattern.
AB patterns: tennis shoes/no tennis shoes, long pants/shorts, short hair/long hair, etc. So many possibilities! 🙂
I love teaching probability to my fourth graders. There are so many fun activites to do with it and it is a great springboard for introduction of fractions!
I taught 5th and 6th grade math last year. One of my favorite things to teach was graphing. We did a graphing project using a bag of M&M’s. Each student received their own bag and we predicted about which color would have the most and journaled about the process of counting and graphing. The students made each kind of graph (picture, bar, line, circle) representing the amount of each color in their bag. Then when we were finished we had a celebration by eating our bags of M&M’s. It was something the students talked about for the rest of the year!!
I enjoy teaching time-telling and multiplication–the lattice way b/c the kids think it is the greatest. I don’t like teaching money concepts b/c when just a few students don’t get it, we spend all year reteaching and practicing it in small groups.
I teach 6th grade and teaching ratios has been great because it incorporates many skills taught previously and helps me show my students how thinsg “tie” together in Math and how we use it in real life situations.
I teach 4th grade with Co-teaching Inclusion so I have a very diverse group of students who all learn differently. From Place Value to Probability, they seem to struggle the most with 2 by 2 digit and 3 by 2 digit Multiplication- the place holder zero is too abstract a concept to their concrete thinking. We use manipulatives, break-a-part method, place value, and interactive websites – they get the how but they still don’t understand the why so they aren’t making the conncetion of understanding!
I have grown to love to teach math! I am currently teaching third grade. My students were having trouble remembering the ins and outs of capacity until I told them about the land of G! In the land of G (draw a giant G), there are 4 queens (draw four Qs inside the G). Each queen has 2 princesses (draw two Ps inside each Q) and each princess has 2 cats! (draw two Cs in each P). My kids LOVE the land of G and it makes it easy for them to remember what they need to know about capacity!
I am a Special Education teacher, so I teach all levels of Math. I started my college career working towards a degree in Secondary Math, but realized that the elementary level was where I wanted to be. So my career has taken me to where I am now.
I love teaching all aspects of math. I don’t think there is any one skill I specifically like better than any other. I just want my student to be firm in their math skills at whatever level they may be working. Seeing my students finally grasp a skill they have been struggling with is priceless.
I teach K. I enjoy teaching graphing, adding and subtracting to my students. My students struggle with place value concepts-ones, tens, money/coins.
We haven’t started with telling time yet, but I think they get the hang of telling time to the hour pretty good. When you throw in the half hour, that is when it gets difficult!
I teach prek – half of my kids move on to another prek class the other half move on to kindergarten. We do alot of counting and patterning – calendar is always a pattern and I started buying some finger puppets from oriental trading and made a little peg boards for them to finish a pattern and make their own patterns – it is nice to have something tangible in their hands – I have noticed the more physical things they have the more apt they are to do the activity – paper doesn’t always make them interested for some reason. I want to make some things like a lady bug with the wings in 2 different colors have die to match the wings and then have them roll the die and take pompoms onto the wings and try how many spots altogether – probably not making sense but I would like to get them thinking adding and subtracting – I also have them using 10frames with manipulatives as well.
I started college as a secondary math major, but I am so glad that I changed my mind to become an elementary teacher. Now that I teach Kindergarten, I couldn’t be father from a high school math class. My favorite math topic to teach is probability. I love giving my 5 and 6 year olds a basic understanding of how probability works. Spinners with color spaces in different sizes really help them to see these concepts. I have each child spin and we graph the results, guessing which color will have the most and least and colors that would be impossible to get.
My students have the most trouble understanding place value. I teach it using ten-frames in a fairly simple format, but I need to re-visit the topic several times throughout the year for them to really get it.
I am a special education teacher. I teach grades 1-5 in a self contained classroom for moderate to severe disabilities. I love teaching math. We spend a lot of time on counting, adding, subtracting, and graphing. I do enjoy teaching the geometry units. The students love shapes and finding shapes in their environment!
I teach Kinder. I enjoy teaching adding and subtracting to my students. My students struggle with measurement and money/coins.
I teach first grade. I love teaching math in any hands on way that helps the students understand the process of the math they are learning. My students this year are really struggling with balanced equations that include addition and subtraction. We have tests that ask them to fill in the missing number in problems like 4+7=?-5 This has been an ongoing area for review and practice this year!!
I teach kindergarten. The skill or concept that I enjoy teaching is addition and subtraction math facts. It is amazing how much they have grasped throughout the year. Most students in my 5 year old kindergarten come in with some prior knowledge of numbers and counting from preschool experiences. However, some come in with no prior knowledge of numbers and counting. So it is amazing when they can actually solve simple math facts.
In September I teach what numbers 1 – 10 look like. Now I’m teaching these same kids how to write above 100, some of them are working on the 1000s to 9,999. They’re counting mixed groups of coins. They read and write the time to the hour and the half hour. They read the number words. They’re so smart, and I feel so blessed to be the one that helped them to learn so much.
Estimation is always difficult to teach; I’ve seen this with kids of all ages – they want to give the “correct” answer.
The calendar bulletin board is my favorite teaching tool. On it, I display 100s charts, colored clips in the ones, tens, and 100s place, the monthly calendar with the dates on pattern pieces so the kids can guess the next part of the pattern.
Oops, Re: previous post, I teach kindergarten. One of my brightest kids turned 5 the end of October! Most of the others were already 5, two of them turned 5 in September.
I enjoy teaching about money. We’ve done it with a classroom store and the fun of creation, shopping, using real coins, making “real” receipts, etc. takes away any sense of effort for learning money skills. Later in the year the good foundation with money makes using coins to teach regrouping for fact practice much easier.
I presently teach K-1-2-3.
I teach Kindergarten and my students are 5 and6 year olds. I like to teach paterning and shapes. I use the mathemetical terms for each shape and am always excited when I see an elipse, pentacle,and rhombus shape with the true shape name on it. For some reason, early childhood companies think that young children can not learn these mathematical terms. I always use the correct terms including vertex,and vertices.
Love Math! Especially love being able to use manipulatives and movement to tech concepts.