Effective Math Teaching Practices
When the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) published Principles to Actions in 2014, they identified eight
Effective Math Teaching Practices to help teachers design and deliver engaging and meaningful mathematical experiences. Explore
the posts linked below to learn more about these practices.
Understanding the Framework
The Effective Math Teaching Practices
Hear how these practices work together to help teachers deliver meaningful mathematical experiences.
A Framework for Powerful Math Instruction - Part 1
Discover the power of these practices and how they can transform your classroom and deepen student learning.- A Framework for Powerful Math Instruction - Part 2
See how these practices work together as a framework to support intentional, student-centered instruction.
Planning and Teaching
- EMTP 1: Establish Mathematics Guide to Focus Learning
Establishing goals to focus learning is a critical first step to planning and implementing instruction. - EMTP 2: Implement Tasks that Promote Reasoning and Problem Solving
By implementing tasks that promote reasoning and problem solving, teachers provide opportunities for students to think deeply about mathematical concepts. - EMTP 6: Build Procedural Fluency from Conceptual Understanding
Build procedural fluency from conceptual understanding so that students skillfully and flexibly use strategies and procedures as they solve contextual and computational problems. - EMTPs in Actions: 1, 2 and 6
Clear goals, reasoning-rich tasks, and conceptual foundations support student learning in this fourth-grade lesson on adding fractions with common demoninators.
The Engaging Classroom
- EMTP 4: Facilitate Meaningful Mathematical Discourse
When teachers facilitate meaningful mathematical discourse, students have opportunities to share and justify their reasoning and learn from their peers. - EMTP 3: Use and Connect Mathemtical Representations
Using and connecting mathematical representations supports students' ability to explore, choose, connect, and move fluidly between different mathematical representations. - EMTP 5: Pose Purposeful Questions
Teachers pose purposeful questions to assess and advance students' reasoning about key mathematical ideas and relationships. - EMTP 7: Support Productive Struggle in Learning Mathematics
Support productive struggle in learning mathematics as students grapple with mathematical ideas and relationships. - EMTP 8: Elicit and Use Evidence of Student Thinking
Eliciting and using evidence of student thinking allows teachers to assess progress, support learning, and make meaningful instructional decisions. - 6 Practices for Facilitating Discourse
COMING SOON
Exploring Reel Classrooms
Numberless Word Problems
Consider how these teaching practices work together as these second graders explore, analyze, and make predictions about a basketball game context with no numbers provided.- 3 Act Task
In this example of Three Act Task, fifth grade students engage in the statistical process to explore and represent how many times students can write their name in one minute.