Solving for Why: Understanding, Assessing, and Teaching Students Who Struggle with Math, Grades K-8

"Solving for Why offers educators the tools and guidance essential for successfully solving for why students struggle with mathematics. The step-by-step, RTI (Response to Intervention) – like approaches, focused on assessment and communication with students, help teachers gain insight into student understanding in a remarkably different way than recipe-type approaches that assume the same solution applies to learners with similar struggles. With Solving for Why you’ll learn how to:
• identify a struggling math learner;
• develop theories for why a learner may be struggling;
• facilitate a Concrete — Representational — Abstract (CRA) Assessment;
• implement an insightful Collaborative Study;
• conduct powerful student interviews;
• support learners who struggle with memory challenges, attention deficit disorder, and affective difficulties (math anxiety);
• differentiate instruction through a main lesson — menu lesson plan; and more.
Each chapter includes reproducible templates for ease in carrying out the assessments. A final section offers resources for supporting students who struggle with additive reasoning, multiplicative reasoning, fractions, and proportional reasoning. The reproducibles are also available in a downloadable, printable format at www.mathsolutions.com/solvingforwhyreproducibles.
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John Tapper is an Assistant Professor of Elementary Education at the University of Hartford. He has been a teacher in a variety of schools including the Primary Program, a nongraded elementary program in Westminster, Vermont. He has worked as a math coach, curriculum director, and education researcher. Dr Tapper has worked with students and teachers on improving their understanding of mathematics throughout the United States and,. Internationally, in Eastern Europe and Japan. He has conducted education research for the Donahue Institute at the University of Massachusetts and with the Kaput Center for Research and Innovation in STEM education. John lives in Vermont with his extended family and his very mathematical dogs.