3 strategies to establish a classroom where every student is a confident mathematician.
You love nurturing the seed of mathematics in young minds—that’s part of why you became a math teacher, right?
If you’re like me, it is!
But, as a 16-year veteran of high school math classrooms, I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard these or similar laments:
“I’m not a math person.”
“Girls aren’t very good at math, but boys are.”
“My dad was bad at math, so I am too.”
It can be heartbreaking to learn that your students carry these preconceived notions, but the good news is that mindsets can change! Even better, you can be instrumental in adjusting these perspectives with a few simple practices.
Try these three research-backed tips on fostering a growth mindset, encouraging perseverance, and setting the stage for mathematical risk-taking from the first day of school.
1. Establish the value of operating with a growth mindset.
Human beings, whether they’re children or adults, don’t like to struggle. It doesn’t feel good and makes us want to give up—unless we are taught to value the opportunities our stumbles create.
You can increase student confidence from the first day of school by framing their (and your!) mistakes as another step towards mastery. Teaching your students about the value of a growth mindset is like providing them with rich, loamy soil in which to plant the seed of math confidence.
For middle and high school students, start by asking them to explore their feelings about making mistakes, engaging in struggle, and reflecting on learning with this Mathematical Mindset Practices Rubric. It’s especially powerful to have students evaluate their responses as you foster discussion about the mindsets, thoughts, and practices mirrored in each question!
Elementary students can dig into discovering growth mindsets through picture books like The Thing Lou Couldn’t Do by Ashley Spires or Mistakes That Worked by Charlotte Foltz Jones. Reading together, even in the math classroom, is a fun and engaging way to help young students relate to the concept that you grow when you struggle.
Younger students will also enjoy this video about developing a growth mindset. They will follow two seeds as one decides to grow and explore the world and the other remains fixed in place with the fear of change.
2. Create opportunities for perseverance and collaboration.
Once students have begun to embrace a growth mindset, providing them with opportunities for perseverance is the water and sun that will sprout the seed of becoming a confident “math person.” These opportunities help students see how persistence and planning together to overcome obstacles naturally lead to understanding.
Develop perseverance by providing rich, open-ended tasks to encourage collaboration and creative thinking. Assignments that can be approached from more than one angle or solved with more than one solution are particularly powerful because they illustrate the value of different types of thinkers. You can even look for a math textbook that has classroom collaboration and mathematical discussion built-in, like MATHbook, the consumable text component of our Middle and High School Math Solutions.
Sidenote: I like to use open-ended activities on a Friday or the day after completing an assessment to bring the group back together for collaboration and community-building.
3. Provide opportunities for safe and low-stakes risk-taking.
Finally, for your classroom to become a place where every student embraces a growth mindset and is a confident participant, it’s essential to weed the garden of barriers to growth. Do this by creating safe opportunities for risk-taking.
My Favorite No is an activity I have found effective for celebrating and learning from mistakes while also creating a safe space through anonymity. It’s a quick assessment exercise where students use notecards to complete an opening/bellwork problem:
Distribute notecards to each student and have them write their names on the back. They will complete the problem shown on the board.
Collect the cards and anonymously sort them into piles of “Yes” (correct) and “No” (incorrect) answers.
Choose your “Favorite No” to share with the class.
Ask them to identify steps or work they like about the “Favorite No.”
Conclude by working with the group to pinpoint errors and arrive at the correct solution.
Join in the discussion and bring growth mindsets to your classroom!
There’s nothing like seeing that moment when your nurturing pays off and a struggling student finally blossoms into a confident “math person.”
I vividly remember watching a 9th grader, Lyla, become the expert on transformations of quadratic functions during a small-group activity. Lyla struggled with confidence throughout the year, but she found her time to shine because she accepted and acted on feedback, carefully worked through the MATHia modules, and used her experiences to take the risk of leading her group. Lyla embraced a growth mindset and is now a confident mathematician.
I hope these tips will help you grow the seed of math confidence in every student.
Do you have ideas about growth mindsets, perseverance, or risk-taking? Make sure to join the LONG + LIVE + MATH community to chat with other educators about establishing math as a subject where every student can feel confident!
Before joining Carnegie Learning's marketing team in 2022, Karen spent 16 years teaching mathematics and social studies in Ohio classrooms. She has a passion for inclusive education and believes that all learners can be meaningfully included in academic settings from day one. As a former math and special education teacher, she is excited to provide educators with the latest in best-practices content so that they can set all students on the path to becoming confident "math people."
Explore more related to this authorHuman beings, whether they’re children or adults, don’t like to struggle. It doesn’t feel good and makes us want to give up—unless we are taught to value the opportunities our stumbles create.
Karen Sloan, Math and Special Education Teacher for 16 Years
