Many ideas sound great in theory, but it’s hard to know what will work in an actual classroom. I remember feeling the same way when I was still in the classroom. This was particularly true in math. I searched for tips on how to help students with math number stories (or word problems) and attended lots of professional development. But no matter what I tried, my students struggled to understand what was happening in the math stories.

It was out of frustration and necessity I created Structures of Equality (SoE). I knew reading comprehension was at the root of why my students were struggling in math. Since then, it’s become my mission to help other teachers learn how to help their students make sense of math stories.

Straight from the classroom

In December 2023, I introduced you to Jasmin, a 4th-grade teacher in her first full year of implementing SoE in her classroom. I recently followed up with her to learn more about how it’s been going. She shared the highs, the lows, and why she’s committed to sticking with this teaching practice.

Let’s start with the struggles

We want to help students with math number stories, especially help them understand what the problems are asking. But, even with an effective reading comprehension tool like SoE, there are hurdles to implementation. 

These are the biggest barriers Jasmin’s faced this year:

• Most of her students are not functionally literate. Their working memory is often used for tasks like decoding.
• Students don’t want to draw out the models. They want to jump straight to solving. They developed poor habits before 4th grade and want to “get an answer” as opposed to thinking through the why.
• People who help with homework such as family members or tutors unintentionally reinforce ineffective strategies such as keywords.
• New students coming into the classroom aren’t familiar with this approach (more on this later).

While this didn’t come up in our conversation, I’d bet many of her students have developed fixed mindsets around mathematics, only adding to the struggle.

But even with these challenges, Jasmin isn’t going to stop using the structures. When I asked her why, she responded, “If I feel like something is good for the kids, I’m going to hold to it.” After all, it is about what’s best for kids, right?

And she’s had enough success to know that SoE is an effective practice.

Success stories

Even though it’s been a bumpy ride, Jasmin was excited to share her students’ progress. Here are a few of the highlights. Her students:

• can draw the models with minimal support
• show an attention to detail that wasn’t there previously
• make connections between the visual representations and the conceptual ideas
• make sense of what the problem is asking
• know what it means to have labels and values
• have internalized the idea of unit and could translate that to understanding units with fractions

While these are all noteworthy, I was thrilled to hear that last one. The idea of unit is critical in math. That alone makes using the structures worthwhile, even when your kids tell you it’s “annoying” to draw out the models (like some of Jasmin’s do).

Let’s dig into a couple of these success stories in detail.

What happens when you have a new student enter your class?

In January, Jasmin was thrown a huge curveball. She had new students enter her classroom. Most of her students had internalized the structures and could draw them with minimal support. I was curious to hear how this played out. Jasmin shared about one student who came in “very, very lost.”

“She was just kind of like, I’m confused and you’re confusing me with this. So, why are you going to make me double confused? Now she’s really, really good with it.”

Before entering her class, the student’s grades hovered around 60. Now? “She is consistently getting 100% with me.” She draws the models independently and even reminds Jasmin to edit her model if she makes an error, like leaving off a label.

What about students who are Multilingual Learners (MLL)?

Jasmin shared about the kid who is the most successful in class. He always does a model, has exemplary work, and doesn’t make errors because he slows down to do the models. He is MLL and had been “on the bubble”. But now, he’s thriving. Here’s his story.

Me: Do you think he’s doing the models every time, and successfully, because he’s one of your strongest math students, or do you think he’s one of your strongest math students because he’s consistently doing the models?

Jasmin: Honestly, I’m going to say it’s the latter because… his third grade teacher would say, like, he’s such a people pleaser, not in fourth grade. 

He’s great at mental math. But at the beginning of the year, he would still make little careless errors. And I feel like the extra time that it takes him to do the model slows him down enough that he doesn’t make those errors, whether in computation or comprehension.

So, yeah, and again, he just can be so resistant to new things that I genuinely feel like he has bought in, he just isn’t going to tell me he bought in if that makes sense.

Me: If you asked him and he answered you honestly, what do you think he might say about why he’s bought in?

Jasmin: I think he honestly would say it’s a way for him to understand what he’s doing. It’s a way for you to know your units, a way for you to know what you’re solving for. It’s a way for you to know what you know. Like, it’s a way to just organize all your information to make it easier for you to solve the problem.

Wow! That’s pretty powerful. 

What does the data say?

Anecdotally, one of Jasmin’s students says “This helps you to know what you’re supposed to do.” Right after this interview, she had some data to back that up.

Jasmine: My students took their spring district assessment. 13 of them took the test and 10 of them passed. The lowest score in my class was 50, 4 questions away from passing.

And a few final tips

If Jasmin could wave a magic wand and start all over again, here are two things that would have been helpful.

1. She would have hosted a family night at the start of the year to bridge the gap and avoid a disconnect with homework.
2. Starting the structures in 4th grade adds an extra challenge. She’s confident that starting SoE in kindergarten would have greatly benefited all of her students.

Conclusion

We all know there is no magic wand. Implementing any new practice, especially a rigorous one, isn’t easy to do. But if you’re willing to stick with it, you and your students will reap the rewards. 

If you’re ready for a new way to help your students with math number stories, it’s not too late to start. You can start with components like helping your students find the math main idea and build from there.  

And I’ll be here to support you along the way. Not sure where to begin? Join my Facebook community! 

And don’t forget about my email list. You get access to free resources before they’re available to anyone else.