PEBC BLOG

Wendy Ward Hoffer

Four Steps for Getting Unstuck

By Wendy Ward Hoffer / December 8, 2016

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, […]

Teaching Math for Understanding

By Wendy Ward Hoffer / October 24, 2016

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 […]

Effective Vocabulary Instruction in a Few Minutes Per Day

By Wendy Ward Hoffer / July 6, 2016

Wendy Ward Hoffer Particularly helpful to learners are instructional strategies that take students beyond word-definition memorization to engage them more fully with the concepts behind the terms (Harmon, Hedrick, and Wood 2005). Yet, since there will never be time enough in any subject in school to directly teach students all […]

Why Teach Vocabulary in Math?

By Wendy Ward Hoffer / June 28, 2016

Wendy Ward Hoffer 1,025,109.8 According to the Global Language Monitor, this is how many words are in the English language as of January 1, 2014. (Now I am not sure how a language can include four-fifths of a word, but let’s leave that aside for now.) Consider the vastness of […]

Why Teach Reading in Math?

By Wendy Ward Hoffer / June 22, 2016

Wendy Ward Hoffer Math and Reading Need Each Other Historically, designers of secondary schools, authors of standards, test writers, and teachers have somehow created and perpetuated a misconception: that reading and math are entirely separate “subjects” having little to do with one another, that one ought not to have to […]

Curriculum As A Smörgåsbord

By Wendy Ward Hoffer / September 14, 2015

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 […]