Perseverance in the Math Classroom

If you have read my posts either here on ATUE or on my blog over at The Teacher Studio, you have probably gotten the feeling that I am passionate about teaching math and helping students learn to love math.  One area that I spend a lot of attention on with my fourth graders is the idea of "perseverance". From the first day of school, I try to put students in situations where they are challenged and need to "persevere" to get to the finish line--and they need a lot of coaching along the way.  Many of them are used to things coming quickly and can easily get frustrated.  As a class, we practice encouraging each other and learn how to "help" without giving answers away.  It takes practice!

As the content this year has grown more difficult, I'm starting to see a few more students start to struggle, so I figured it was time to revisit the idea of "sense making" and perseverance.  Together we reviewed what this means and generated the following list.

I have it posted at the front of the room and we will be referring to it often as we tackle our next units!  I have several other posts about perseverance that explains some things in more detail if you are interested...it is such an important life skill--and is NOT just applicable to math!

Click here to read a post from November about perseverance...and another post here if you want to see a little bit more and yet one more from my guest post over at Minds in Bloom by clicking here!  (You can even grab a freebie at that last one!)

So as you tackle your math instruction for this next week, find ways to challenge your students--but give them some tools along the way so they can be successful.  Thanks for stopping by!

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