Wendy Ward Hoffer

We are happy to introduce you to Wendy Ward Hoffer’s fifth book, Phenomenal Teaching, forthcoming from Heinemann in 2020. This book details the PEBC Teaching Framework (formerly known as our Continuum), providing a wide range of examples and ideas to foster phenomenal thinking and learning in classrooms at all levels. […]

Dear Parents, I know you have been wondering why our math does not look like your math. When you and I were kids, accurate and quick fact fluency was enough to deliver A’s on our report cards. Math has moved on: now, instead of merely memorizing multiplication tables, students are […]

How to Get Unstuck. This is one of the most important lessons we can teach in school. Because the truth is, we all get stuck, all the time. Life is like that. And when we know how to get unstuck, we can move forward. But if we get stuck and […]

Santi had some cookies. His mom baked him 9 more. Now he has 16. How many cookies did Santi have to start? I recently watched some first grade mathematicians share their problem solving around this question. After some independent work time, the group gathered on the rug, and Betsy came […]

A literacy teacher shared with me about a recent reading conference with one of her second graders: the little girl sat diligently by her side, accurately pronounced aloud all the sentences across three pages of a Magic Treehouse book and then burst into tears, proclaiming loudly, “I said all the […]

How will we treat each other, ourselves, our equipment, our time as learners? Shared agreements build community. We can intentionally create a classroom culture of mutual respect and collaboration by establishing, modeling, and holding all participants accountable to supportive agreements about how we learn together. You may already have such […]

Distinguish Productive Struggle from Despair When we raise the bar and ask learners to rise up with greater effort, we need to remain vigilant to their levels of frustration: productive struggle is one thing, but despair is entirely another. They look different: learners engaged in productive struggle are leaning in, […]

  793 X 10 = 7,930 793 x 100 = 79,300 793 x 1000 = 793,000 What do you notice about the above expressions? What is happening to each of the digits of 793? Write the zero rule for multiplication as you understand it? Explain why the zero rule for […]

When I talk with math teachers about shifting their instruction toward math workshop, one common concern arises: How do I cover everything if I dive into only one or two juicy problems a day and spend all this time talking about our thinking? My answer: You won’t. You won’t cover […]