My kids can : making math accessible to all learners, K–5

3 groups (9) and then wrote 9  9  9 9 on the board. Next, she wrote 9  9
18 twice and then 18  18 36. One day, she explained to other students that
multiplication was about how many groups and how many were in each group.
Instead of counting the squares by 1s as she did during the Factor Pairs game,
Heather was now able to chunk the groups of dots, add the groups together, and
not lose track of the total she was counting. Although she was not yet using the
multiplication expressions that other students were using, such as 9 4, she was
building her understanding of equal groups. Some of the students told her that she
helped them see the groups differently. I was thrilled to see her developing her
math understanding and her sense of confidence.
Heather continued to apply her strengths, such as visualization, to solve a
variety of problems. During our study of fractions, when some students were strug-
gling to visualize and , Heather spoke up and said, “What helps me is when I
picture it in my head and when I can draw it in my notebook. Like if we had two
sheets of brownies and cut one sheet into 6 pieces and the other into 4 pieces, I
think of which piece is bigger.” Other students said they had not thought of the
problem like that before and that using Heather’s example helped them figure out
if was equal to, less than, or greater than. After this conversation, I added
Heather’s example to our classroom poster about fraction strategies, and it
became a point of reference for the class.

Becoming Confident Learners

Heather and the other members of the math club began to understand that they
could think mathematically, and they developed multiple ways to enter into the
mathematics of a lesson. They had begun to expect that they would be questioned

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Getting “Un-Stuck”

Figure 19–5.