Help students learn essential math concepts; give parents a chance to serve as models of motivation, persistence and competence; and promote math success in a supportive setting. With its step-by-step directions and suggestions for both teachers and parents, this book takes the worry out of planning and conducting a Family Math Night at your school.

Host family math nights at your elementary school—starting today! Family math nights are a great way for teachers to get parents involved their children’s education and to promote math learning outside of the classroom. In this practical book, you’ll find step-by-step guidelines and activities to help you bring family math nights to life. The enhanced second edition is aligned with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematical Content and Practice with new activities to help students explain their answers and write about math. It also comes with ready-to-use handouts that you can distribute during your event. With the resources in this book, you’ll have everything you need to help students learn essential math concepts—including counting and cardinality; operations and algebraic thinking; numbers and operations in base ten; number and operations – fractions; measurement and data; and geometry—in a fun and supportive environment. Special Features: The book is organized by math content and grade band, so you can quickly find activities that meet your needs. Each activity is easy to implement and includes a page of instructions educators can use to prepare the station, as well as a page for families that explains the activity and can be photocopied and displayed at the station. All of the family activities can be photocopied or downloaded from our website, www.routledge.com/9781138915541, so that you can distribute them during your event.

Host Family Math Nights at your middle school—starting today! Family Math Nights are a great way for teachers to get parents involved in their children’s education and to promote math learning outside of the classroom. In this practical book, you’ll find step-by-step guidelines and activities to help you bring Family Math Nights to life. The enhanced second edition is aligned with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematical Content and Practice with new activities to help students explain their answers and write about math. It also comes with ready-to-use handouts that you can distribute during your event. With the resources in this book, you’ll have everything you need to help students learn essential math concepts—including ratios and proportional relationships, the number system, expressions and equations, geometry, and statistics and probability—in a fun and supportive environment. Special Features: The book is organized by math content, so you can quickly find activities that meet your needs. Each activity is easy to implement and includes a page of instructions educators can use to prepare the station, as well as a page for families that explains the activity and can be photocopied and displayed at the station. All of the family activities can be photocopied or downloaded from our website, www.routledge.com/9781138200999, so that you can distribute them during your event.

This invaluable resource has been created to help beginning teachers move toward becoming ?master? teachers by providing the framework for tasks and dispositions that are part of a thriving elementary classroom community. Although not a theory book, From Striving to Thriving provides explanations and rationales in a context for the activities, strategies and tools it suggests. Chapter contents include subject areas such as communication (with parents as well as school relationships); finding resources to enrich the learning experience; organization; building community in the classroom; and attending the diverse needs of learners. A zipped file is also included that contains lists, letters, student and family activities, recommended literature, lesson plans and PowerPoint presentations.

Home, School, and Community Collaboration uses the culturally responsive family support model as a framework to prepare teachers to work effectively with children from diverse families. Authors Kathy B. Grant and Julie A. Ray skillfully incorporate numerous real-life vignettes and case studies to show readers the practical application of culturally responsive family engagement. The Fourth Edition contains additional content that enhances the already relevant text, including: a new section titled "Perspectives on Poverty" acknowledging the deep levels of poverty in the United States and the impact on family-school relations; increased coverage of Latino/Latina family connections; and updated demographics focusing on the issues impacting same-sex families, families experiencing divorce, children and family members with chronic illnesses, military families, and grandparents raising children. With contributions from more than 22 experts in the field offering a wide range of perspectives, this book will help readers understand, appreciate, and support diverse families. This text is accompanied with FREE online resources!

Learn how to work more effectively with K–5 parents to increase student achievement in math and literacy. Research shows that parent involvement in schools leads to higher test scores and more engaged and enthusiastic students, but it isn’t always easy for teachers to bridge the gap between the home and the school. This insightful book provides helpful, research-based strategies to foster meaningful home–school partnerships and overcome the challenges teachers often face when trying to build relationships with parents. You’ll learn new ways to: Promote parent involvement at home and school; Share specific math and literacy strategies with parents to reinforce children’s learning; Plan and organize effective parent conferences that foster true dialogue about a child’s education; Communicate with parents about what you’re teaching and how you’re teaching it, so they can actively contribute to their child’s learning at home; Develop family nights and workshops to get parents involved in learning at school; Recommend games, activities, and projects that parents can use at home to help their children practice math and literacy skills; And much more! Each chapter is full of practical tools such as Common Core-aligned strategies, useful resources for parents, and sample parent letters that you can use to increase and improve your home–school communications. Bonus: Additional parent letters on a variety of topics are available on our website, www.routledge.com/ 9781138998698, to help you keep parents connected throughout the year.

This volume focuses on multicultural curriculum transformation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics or STEM subject areas broadly, while also focusing on sub-content areas (e.g., earth science, digital technologies) in greater detail. The discussion of each sub-content area outlines critical considerations for multicultural curriculum transformation for the sub-content areas by grade level (early childhood and elementary school education, middle and/or junior high school education, and high school education) and then by organizing tool parameters: standards (both in a generalized fashion, and specific to Common Core State Standards, among other standards), educational context, relationships with and among students and their families, civic engagement, considerations pertaining to educational “ability” broadly considered (for example, for gifted and talented education, bilingual gifted and talented education, “regular” education, bilingual “regular” education, special education, bilingual special education), as well as relative to specific content and corresponding pedagogical considerations, including evaluation of student learning and teaching effectiveness. In this way, the volume provides a conceptual framework andconcrete examples for how to go about multiculturally-transforming curriculum in STEM curricula. The volume is designed to speak with PK-12 teachers as colleagues in the multicultural curriculum transformation work at focus in each subject area and at varied grade levels. Readers are exposed to “things to think about,” but also given curricular examples to work with or from in going about the actual, concrete work of curriculum change. It bridges the gaps between preparing PK-12 teachers to be able to 1) independently multiculturally adapt existing curriculum, and, 2) create new multicultural curriculum differentiated for their content areas and grade levels, while also, 3) providing ample examples of what such adapted and new differentiated curricula looks like. In so doing, this volume also bridges the gaps between the theory and practice of multicultural curriculum transformation in higher and PK-12 educational contexts.

"This book is a game changer! Strengths-Based Teaching and Learning in Mathematics: 5 Teaching Turnarounds for Grades K- 6 goes beyond simply providing information by sharing a pathway for changing practice. . . Focusing on our students’ strengths should be routine and can be lost in the day-to-day teaching demands. A teacher using these approaches can change the trajectory of students’ lives forever. All teachers need this resource! Connie S. Schrock Emporia State University National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics President, 2017-2019 NEW COVID RESOURCES ADDED: A Parent’s Toolkit to Strengths-Based Learning in Math is now available on the book’s companion website to support families engaged in math learning at home. This toolkit provides a variety of home-based activities and games for families to engage in together. Your game plan for unlocking mathematics by focusing on students’ strengths. We often evaluate student thinking and their work from a deficit point of view, particularly in mathematics, where many teachers have been taught that their role is to diagnose and eradicate students’ misconceptions. But what if instead of focusing on what students don’t know or haven’t mastered, we identify their mathematical strengths and build next instructional steps on students’ points of power? Beth McCord Kobett and Karen S. Karp answer this question and others by highlighting five key teaching turnarounds for improving students’ mathematics learning: identify teaching strengths, discover and leverage students’ strengths, design instruction from a strengths-based perspective, help students identify their points of power, and promote strengths in the school community and at home. Each chapter provides opportunities to stop and consider current practice, reflect, and transfer practice while also sharing · Downloadable resources, activities, and tools · Examples of student work within Grades K–6 · Real teachers’ notes and reflections for discussion It’s time to turn around our approach to mathematics instruction, end deficit thinking, and nurture each student’s mathematical strengths by emphasizing what makes them each unique and powerful.

Practical, ready-to-use ELL strategies firmly rooted in the latest research This book provides practical strategies and tools for assessing and teaching even the most hard to reach English language learners across the content areas. Syrja offers educators the latest information on working with ELLs (including using formative assessments) and provides a wealth of classroom-tested models and measures. These tools have proven to be effective with ESL students at all levels, including Long Term English Learners (LTELs). Throughout the book, the author shares powerful research-based strategies and clearly illustrates how they should be implemented in the classroom for maximum impact. Filled with proven ideas and easy-to-implement tips for teaching ELLs Designed to be a practical ELL/ESL resource for classroom teachers Syrja, a former teacher and ESL student, is a noted expert in English language learning and a Professional Development Associate with the Leadership and Learning Center This value-packed guide offers educators accessible and research-based classroom strategies for reaching and teaching ELLs.

It is widely accepted that when home and school work together, children's learning improves. Although this fact is readily acknowledged, communication between school and home is still often one-sided and remains a struggle for many teachers. This book explores a wide range of tools -- take-home information and materials, parent conferences, learning nights, and digital and social media -- for teachers to use in establishing and maintaining the parent-teacher relationship, one that holds the child at the center of all education decisions.