Professional Development on how to incorporate the Science of Math into daily math instruction with any curriculum.

Karen provides in-person and online professional development for teachers, math interventionists, and parents on how to build foundational math skills from pre-K through pre-algebra, based in the science of how children learn math. While helping to write How Children Learn Math: The Science of Math Learning in Research and Practice (2023), Karen read thousands of research articles on math learning and cognition and continues to keep up with the research each month with her co-authors.

Karen’s extensive experience with helping students learn math contributes to her ability to teach others how to teach math as well. Karen’s additional experience as a speech and language therapist provides a deep understanding of how language and reading are essential for math learning as well as how to break learning for greater success.

The science of math includes teaching concepts, using varied strategies that lead to mathematical thinking and not simply memorization, using procedures that coincide with understanding concepts, various types of mathematical reasoning, and a belief that all children can learn math and develop a positive outlook about the usefulness of math in everyday life.

The science of math provides coherent, systematic, and structured teaching in math that leads to incremental and logical understanding.

The following are some of the goals of her professional development. Attendees will know:

• How to modify the very abstract English language of math that results in immediate increase
  in understanding math concepts
• How to teach explicit Base-10 concepts, thinking and strategies rarely used in curriculums
  that lead to deeper understanding of math and greater ease in arithmetic
• How to include number lines, number charts, and spatial processing as a critical component
  of developing a mental number line and learning arithmetic
• How to include concrete experience with math, followed by meaningful diagrams and
  pictures, and then abstract representations of the math concepts
• How to consistently use decomposition as highest level of mathematical thinking
• How to improve math fact fluency for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division
• How to use explicit instruction with modeling, targeted practice and feedback
• How to solve word problem with a variety of strategies and approaches
• How to teach rational numbers: fractions, decimals and percentages with greater meaning,
  modified language, magnitude understanding, and a deep understanding of arithmetic and
  procedures
• How to include spatial skill development and why it is so important
• How to consider the cognitive skills children need to succeed in math, and how some
  common curriculum instruction requires cognitive skills beyond what is expected for children
  of different ages.