Early Childhood Math: Dedicate and Integrate Daily Math Instruction.

Douglas Clements- Welcome to a brief discussion on how to dedicate time each day to teaching math and integrate math instruction throughout the school day from the IES practice guide, Teaching Math to Young Children. Let's get started. There are five recommendations in the practice guide and all are based on a systematic review of a search conducted by researchers and practitioners with expertise and experience in early math development.

In this video, we will discuss recommendation five which suggests that we dedicate time each day to teaching math and integrate math instruction throughout the school day. The first way to carry out recommendation five is to plan daily instruction targeting specific math concepts and skills.

Planning purposeful time every day to address the math topics introduced in recommendations one and two of the practice guide provides a foundation for children to practice and extend their knowledge and skills throughout the day. Teachers can introduce new math concepts during short whole group activities.

These can include everything from informal discussions of a new concept such as, where have you seen a pattern to reading a book that introduces an idea such as The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins, a fun story in which cookies must be shared among a growing number of friends.

The second way to carry out recommendation five is to embed math in classroom routines and activities to reinforce the new concepts introduced during dedicated instructional time. Routines such as taking attendance, cleaning up or snack time are all purposeful opportunities for children to practice and extend their math skills.

Cleaning up might seem devoid of math but children can put away blocks by matching them to a figure painted on the back of the shelves and the teacher might say, pick up those four blocks under the table and will be all done instead of just pick up those blocks.

The third way to carry out recommendation five is to highlight math within topics across the curriculum, depending on what current math objectives of the class are and where the children are in the developmental progression for these objectives. Teachers could point out the opportunities to count objects, examine shapes, analyze data or measure options.

For example, during literacy, select a book that reinforces the current math topic recently introduced. Consider the book, One was Johnny. Like all Maurice Sendak's books, it is good literature filled with rhyme and cadence and interesting characters.

But in addition, it's a lovely counting book better than most because when you count the characters, the relation between counting and adding one more is intrinsic to the story. Then to solve the problem, the main character counts backwards. The fourth way to carry out recommendation five is to create a math-rich environment where children can recognize and meaningfully apply math.

Math related objects and tools should be available and accessible for children to use throughout the day. It's important to place tools at eye level, that they be labeled and their use demonstrated. Teachers may need to explicitly model how to use tools during small or large group time.

For example, using a ruler is more complex than many curriculum might imply. So in a science project in which children are measuring weekly the height of plants that they grow, it makes sense to do some focused mathematics on how rulers work. For example, children might measure the same object first using physical units such as inch cubes and then using rulers to ensure children understand that the ruler is just a way that determine how many units of height.

They can discuss the importance of the zero point on rulers and so forth. Then they will be measuring the height of the plants with understanding. The fifth way to carry out recommendation five is to use games to teach math concepts and skills and to give children practice in applying them.

Games are a fun and engaging way to practice and extend math skills outside of dedicated instructional time. Some curriculum include games or they can be purchased separately or even teacher-made. Select games that reinforce current instructional objectives.

For example, one of our favorite games is a cookie game in which children roll a die and put that many counters or chocolate chips on a plate. Then they ask their partner, am I right? If so they place the chips on circles to fill in their construction paper cookie.

Many competencies are practiced in this simple game such as accurately counting the dots on the die and producing a set of counters to match the number of dots on the die. Other games that do not require materials such as hopscotch and jump rope are also a great way to practice math skills.