The Well-Rounded Math Student
Leveraging Math Practices to Build Next Generation Skills
Integrate a holistic approach to mathematics success with essential personal and social skills
Teaching math is more than just numbers. It’s about shaping future-ready students who are not only academically strong but thrive socially and emotionally. Research shows that learning both intrapersonal and interpersonal skills helps students academically, and teachers play a crucial role in providing social-emotional support.
The Well-Rounded Math Student helps mathematics teachers in Grades K-12 foster both their students' academic prowess and their social and emotional development. Through the lens of the Standards for Mathematical Practice, the book emphasizes the importance of intentionally teaching and promoting intrapersonal and interpersonal skills, or "Next Generation" skills, alongside mathematical concepts. The authors provide step-by-step guidance on how small adjustments in lesson planning can have a profound impact on students' growth.
Providing teachers with a new lens to leverage in their planning as well as concrete ways to use their mathematics lessons to explicitly teach and reinforce social and emotional competencies, this book:
- Holds a strengths-based mindset and approach—for both teachers and students
- Highlights the importance of the science and the art of teaching to enhance social development, human connection, classroom management, and community within classrooms
- Stresses that the overarching goal of education is to help students become responsible adults who are ready for their future
- Includes a lesson planning guide, competency builder activities, vignettes of enhanced lessons across grade bands, reflection questions, and suggestions for taking action
The Well-Rounded Math Student bridges critical intrapersonal and interpersonal elements to help educators create an environment where students excel in math and develop the life skills they’ll carry forever.
Recognizing that students need to learn social and emotional skills is one thing; helping them do so is another. This book can help you do just that. With its easy-to-follow structure, The Well-Rounded Math Student offers us ways to help students develop both intra- and interpersonal skills through specific instructional strategies situated within the context of mathematical activities, such as problem-solving, reasoning, argumentation, and precision, and brought to life with real classroom examples.
This book could revolutionize the world of education! It takes the concept of integrating interpersonal and intrapersonal life skills into the math classroom. It is informative and straightforward. The authors provide current, practical examples that help readers see the full vision of the author’s work and how to implement the ideas quickly and effectively.
This book illuminates how to integrate the development of students intrapersonal and interpersonal skills alongside emphasizing the mathematical practices. The many classroom examples, dozens of competency builder ideas, and collection of logs and assessment tools equip teachers to explicitly attend to students social and emotional competencies, while also developing their mathematical proficiency.
This book is exactly what teachers need right now. After working with the math practices for 20 years it’s time to take them to a new level. Incorporating purposeful social-emotional learning into the math classroom will build connections between students and their math knowledge. It’s a brilliant idea!
Written by practitioners, for practitioners, the authors authentically demonstrate how to recognize and support students’ social emotional development through mathematics planning and assessment. This resource seamlessly integrates social-emotional competencies with the eight Standards for Mathematical Practice. Shifting focus from the stigma of adding 'more' to a teacher’s plate, this book serves to encourage meaningful mathematical learning.
The Well-Rounded Math Student offers a practical guide for fostering strong math skills as well as social and emotional competencies. As a former elementary math coach, I've seen how building number sense, problem-solving abilities, and confidence in students leads to success. This book highlights the importance of creative thinking and self-regulation, providing strategies to nurture both academic and emotional growth in young learners. Ideal for teachers, administrators, and math advocates.
The authors have thought deeply about our learners and their ever-evolving needs, as well as the math educators who are doing the brave work of teaching them on a day-to-day basis. The Well-Rounded Math Student: Leveraging Math Practices to Build Next Generation Skills is written with both groups in mind. The work intentionally elevates competencies in a way that helps students access content, offering educators practical strategies that position their students as both capable mathematicians and thriving humans.
The Well-Rounded Math Student: Leveraging Math Practices to Build Next Generation Skills is a must-have resource for educators committed to wholechild development. By seamlessly embedding social-emotional competencies into mathematics instruction, this book equips teachers to foster self-efficacy, adaptability, and perseverance in their students. The practical tools, reflective questions, and real-world examples make it an invaluable guide for creating engaging, inclusive classrooms where academic and social-emotional growth go hand in hand. A transformative resource for educators and school counselors alike!
This book bridges the gap between math instruction and social-emotional development, providing practical tools and insights I wish I had as a teacher. It is an extremely useful resource for math educators who want to cultivate not just problem solvers, but thoughtful, resilient, and adaptable learners.
If we want to build confident mathematicians who have self-efficacy and can talk fluently about math in a respectful classroom setting, this book walks us through just how easily we can achieve that! I feel empowered to make the shift in my lesson planning to meld social-emotional competencies with my math practices. It just makes sense! Make this your next professional development read!
