Building Thinking Classrooms 2025 Annual Conference

Do you have students who shut down at the sight of a word problem? This session introduces research-based practices that worked with the lowest-performing students in both a Title 1 elementary school and high school. We will explore several instructional practices that span grade K-10 needs: exact-length bar templates, introducing structured expressions, expression/quantity matching, quantity onions, and finally algebraic expressions. BTC-style concept maps provided. Session immediately begins with participants working as students on VNPSs and on a webapp for 45-50 minutes followed by time for questions. Links to videos will be provided for the development, theory, & pilot data, instead of using valuable session time.