Teachers recently told us, of all the K-6 math topics in the curriculum, which one they would most like help with.
Care to guess which topic came to the top of the list?
Most Challenging K-6 Math Topic
The “winner”: Place value. Close behind? Operations, followed by Number facts.
Since these three broad topics form the bulk of the mathematics curriculum, especially if you include fractions, perhaps this isn’t a big surprise. But another perspective is that, while these three form the backbone of the math curriculum, they are possibly the most abstract and the most difficult for children to understand.
Most Requested Resources
The followup question we asked was “If support for the above K-6 math topic were available, which of the following components would you like included?” The following possible components were listed:
- Teacher information about recommendations for teaching the topic
- Pretest to assess students’ learning prior to starting the topic
- Video to set the scene / prompt discussion / show math in real life contexts
- Video for teacher on recommended teaching
- Instructional video for students
- Hands-on learning activities
- Worksheets
- Differentiation activities for various levels of ability
- Homework sheets
- Parents information to explain homework
- Posttest to assess students’ learning after learning the topic
The results? The top request, made by 85% of respondents, was “Hands-on learning activities”, followed by “Differentiation activities for various levels of ability”, and then “Video to set the scene / prompt discussion / show math in real life contexts“.
I am encouraged to see that teachers we have contacted want their students to have experiences with hands-on activities to help them learn math. As we all know, math is a highly abstract discipline, and traditionally it was taught around the symbols, which themselves are linked abstractly to the numbers which they represent. So to provide children with physical, hands-on ways to represent and play around with numbers is the way to help them to understand the subject, in my view.
What Next?
We are now starting development of a new package of resources to support teachers in their teaching of K-6 math. We will start with a small beta product, and put it out to a small group of our best supporters. All being well, this will then become available to others, via this website.
If you would like to be notified of when the package is publicly available, click the box below:
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