The Core Connection

When we plan math, it helps to start with one big question:

What’s the goal?

Is it for students to solve every problem? Finish every component of a Eureka lesson? Have students quietly listen and follow along? Reach 75% proficiency on a skill?

Or is it to develop students who take ownership of their thinking, strategies, and progress?

Once your math goal is clear, your lesson choices become clearer too—tasks, pacing, questions, and structures should all work toward that goal. Let’s name the goal first…then build the lesson to match it.

For example, in a beginning lesson on word problems, the goal doesn’t have to be “solve it.” The goal might be: Students can identify what the problem is asking and name the correct label (units) for the answer. A hands-on way to do this is a “Sort & Match” activity—students read word problems, highlight the question, and match each one to an answer label like miles, minutes, dollars, or students without doing any calculations. When students know what they’re solving for, they become stronger problem-solvers later.

Supplies: scissors, highlighters, envelopes/baggies, sticky notes
How it works:

1. Give pairs a set of word problem strips.

2. Students highlight only the question sentence.

3. They choose the answer label/unit (ex: minutes, pounds, tickets, dollars) and place the problem under that label card.

4. Optional: They write the unknown as a statement:
   “I am solving for ___.”

Success is not always the answer — success is correctly identifying what the answer would represent- and to give students a sense of success when starting a typically daunting task will change their math mindset.

FULL ARTICLE

Fractions and Base 10

Two effective manipulatives that can be used to support fractions and base 10 learning are base 10 blocks and Cuisenaire rods. Base 10 blocks work for all basic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division along with fraction concepts. Try these center ideas utilizing base 10 blocks:

Roll and Build: This activity requires mathematicians to roll a single die to solve a problem. Provide guidelines on how many digits students need for each number. After rolling the dice, students build a representation of the problem using base 10 blocks to prove their answer. The beauty of this center is that the structure doesn’t change—just the operation.

Animal Values: Students are assigned a challenge to build an animal that is worth a certain amount. For example, students could build a base 10 block animal that is 1/10 the value of 1,000. Students use blocks worth 100 to design an animal of their choice. This center is engaging and allows students to practice understanding fractional amounts.

Geometry

Incorporating geometry centers into your classroom routine can act as a continuous spiral review or even as an enrichment opportunity.

Guess My Shape: During this center, students write down a set of three clues for a specific shape or figure. Their partner needs to build the shape based on the clues given. Challenge your students during this center by requiring them to use certain vocabulary words in their clue, such as line segment, angles, etc. Alternatively, you could provide the clues to your mathematicians, and the partner pairs could build the shape together.

Symmetry Search: One mathematician builds a shape, then their partner needs to identify how many lines of symmetry are in it. To create an extension for this center, mathematicians can explain where the lines of symmetry in the shape are and how they know that each side is symmetrical from that line. Recording thoughts in a notebook is a great way to hold students accountable during center work.

Shape Collection: Students will need pattern blocks and graph paper for this activity. Mathematicians begin by selecting 20 pattern blocks from a bag. Then, they choose how they want to classify their shapes—by color, number of angles, number of right angles, side lengths, parallel lines, or another attribute. After sorting and recording their data, they create a graph to represent their findings. To differentiate, you can preselect the classification category to support learners who need additional help.

Roll and Build: This center requires both dice and pattern blocks. Students roll one die and choose a pattern block with that many sides. They roll the die 10 times. After collecting their shapes, challenge them to create a design with the shapes they rolled. Their partner needs to guess what the design is. This center provides mathematicians with practice in identifying shapes based on attributes.

February is the perfect month to talk about heart words! Heart words are high-frequency words. These are words you learn by memory because part of the word doesn’t follow the rules. For example, said is a high-frequency word that doesn’t follow the normal phonetic rule. In said, “ai” doesn’t make the long a sound but the short e sound. The /s/ and /d/ follow the rules, and “ai” is the heart part that students must memorize. Students must explicitly be taught these words so they can automatically recognize them when reading.

Key points to remember

• Many heart words are common sight words (e.g., said, was, one).
  
  

• Often, part of the word is decodable, and part must be memorized (the “heart” part).
  
  

• Mastery of heart words improves reading fluency, comprehension, and writing accuracy.
  
  

• The term is commonly used in structured literacy/science of reading instruction.

Below are some great resources for teaching heart words in the primary grades.

• The Six Shifts- Teaching Heart Words

• Routine for Teaching Heart Words

• Teaching Heart Words

As part of your classroom resources, you have reader’s theater books that can be used in a variety of ways in your ELA instruction. Each of the ten units contains reader’s theater books connected to its theme. Readers' theatre is a performance style in which actors read scripts aloud, focusing on vocal expression, facial expressions, and gestures to bring literature to life without costumes, sets, or memorization. It is a powerful tool for enhancing reading fluency, comprehension, and confidence by turning reading into an engaging, collaborative performance.

Here are a few ideas for your classroom.

Repeated Reading With a Purpose

• Day 1: Echo read or teacher model
  
  

• Day 2: Choral read by roles
  
  

• Day 3: Partner read with feedback
  
  

• Day 4: Performance read
  Builds accuracy, rate, and prosody.
  

Prosody Practice
Have students highlight:

• punctuation cues
  
  

• emotion words
  
  

• bold or italic text
  Practice changing voice to match meaning.

Comprehension & Vocabulary

Role Analysis
Students answer:

• Who is my character?
  
  

• What do they want?
  
  

• How do they feel and why?
  

Vocabulary in Context
Pull Tier 2 words from the script:

• act them out
  
  

• match to synonyms
  
  

• use in a new sentence
  

Cause & Effect Through Dialogue
Track how one character’s words lead to another character’s response.

Structured Literacy Alignment

Decode Before You Perform
Pre-teach:

• tricky multisyllabic words
  
  

• heart words
  
  

• sound-spelling patterns
  Supports accuracy and confidence.
  

Phrase-Cued Reading
Mark scripts with slashes to show meaningful phrasing.

Morphology Hunt
Students find:

• prefixes/suffixes
  
  

• base words
  
  

• changes in meanin

Morphology is one of the six parts of structured literacy. It focuses on understanding the use of morphemes (the smallest units of meaning in a word), which are used to form complex words. A morphology matrix is a word-building tool used in structured literacy to help students understand how meaningful word parts (morphemes) combine to form many related words.

A morphology matrix shows:

• Base word (root)
  
  

• Prefixes that can come before the base
  
  

• Suffixes that can come after the base
  
  

Students combine parts across the matrix to build, read, spell, and understand multiple words.

The examples show that you can make this as simple or as complex as you’d like to fit your students' needs. Morphology matrices support multisyllabic word reading. Vocabulary, spelling, writing, and comprehension. As students word with bases, affixes, and roots, they learn new word meanings. They can also apply the meaning of the affixes and roots to determine the meaning of new words and can then use the new words in their writing.

Check out the resources below as you use morpheme matrices in your classroom.

• Morphome Matrix

• Online Template

• Template Maker

• Instructional Protocol for Morpheme Matrices

Science + Literacy Connections

• Groundhog Weather School by Joan Holub

• What Makes a Shadow? by Clyde Robert Bulla
  

• Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner
  

• The Story of Snow: The Science of Winter’s Wonder by Mark Cassino

Writing Prompt:
“If you were an animal that needed to survive winter, what adaptations would you need?”

🌈 Hands-On Extension Ideas

• Shadow Tracking Challenge
  Have students trace a partner’s shadow at different times of day and compare. Tie to Earth’s rotation.
  

• Temperature Investigation
  Students place thermometers in different locations around campus to compare microclimates (sun vs. shade, grass vs. concrete).
  

• “Build a Bear” Engineering
  Students design a winter animal structure using cotton balls, foil, and paper to test insulation.

🏡 Family Science Connection

Try this at home:
“Go on a shadow hunt!”
Families look for shadows indoors and outdoors. Kids explain how shadows form and how they change during the day.

💡 Teacher Tip of the Month

Encourage student predictions before every demonstration or activity.
Prediction → Investigation → Observation → Explanation builds scientific reasoning and language.

⭐ Science Talk Move of the Month: “Build on Someone’s Idea”

Purpose:
Promotes collaborative scientific thinking and helps students learn to connect evidence and reasoning.

Example Teacher Prompt:
“Who can add on to what your classmate just said?”

Student Stems:

• “I agree with ___ because…”
  

• “I want to add on to ___’s idea…”

• “Another example that supports that is…”
  

Classroom Example:
Student A: “The shadow was longer in the morning.”
Student B: “I want to add on to that. I noticed the same thing yesterday, so I think the sun’s position might be causing it.”

📘 Science PD & Resources Corner

Recommended Quick Reads/Videos

• Ambitious Science Teaching: “Talk Moves that Support Student Learning”
  

• Mystery Science Teacher Support Library – Tips for prepping lessons & extensions