Best Practices

Sharing ideas and best practices to promote effective instruction in elementary math Inspired by educators around the world and the work we do at HappyNumbers.com

How to Teach a Sense of Larger Numbers through Estimation

How to Teach a Sense of Larger Numbers through Estimation

A Guessing Jar is one of my favorite activities for promoting number sense and an awareness of how large a number is. I love that it can be filled with anything small or large and right away we have a number activity that is unique every time.
Happy Numbers team· 02 Nov
Hitting Math Benchmarks in K-2 (Case Study)

Hitting Math Benchmarks in K-2 (Case Study)

After mind-growing lessons that focus on conceptual understanding, can students succeed on such abstract tests that only measure procedural fluency? Will the tests cause trauma or anxiety in our youngest students (as it often does in teachers!)? At Slackwood Elementary School in New Jersey, math specialist George Regan set out to answer these questions with some research of his own.
Happy Numbers team· 02 Nov
Going from Concrete to Visual Representation: Combinations to 10

Going from Concrete to Visual Representation: Combinations to 10

Every year when I start things rolling in my third grade classroom, I am amazed at the levels of abilities of my students. There are always a handful of students who, for whatever reason, are lacking number sense in big ways. This handful of students typically struggles with making combinations to 10. So I do what any teacher would do best, I re-teach, and re-teach, and re-teach...
Happy Numbers team· 01 Nov