The Language of Math

Math is hard. That's why Ms. Barrett, our speech-language pathologist, went in to a classroom this week to teach a lesson to students on the language of math. It was amazing to see how quickly students could do quick mental math, but have a hard time telling how they knew which operation to choose based on the words in a problem. Ms. Barrett taught students to look for words like "total" and "all together" to know to use addition, and words like "left" or "difference" to use subtraction. The students then role played number sentences based on word problems involving Mr. Duncan, Crocky, and Pete the Cat. They had a blast!