Welcome to Math Class: A Collection of Marilyn’s Favorite Lessons

Welcome to Math Class features 16 favorite lessons from Marilyn Burns, one of today’s most highly respected mathematics educators. In this specially compiled collection, Marilyn shares lessons that have weathered the test of time and become permanent parts of her teaching repertoire.

The Lessons

Presented as stories, Marilyn’s signature vignettes describe classroom-tested lessons and reveal both the preparing and planning helpful for instruction, as well as:

• address a broad range of math content, some focusing on number and operations while others engaging students with geometry, algebraic thinking, probability, and more;
• provide a detailed look at how lessons unfolded in actual classrooms, including how students responded and examples of students’ written work;
• are presented in sections to make it easier for you to translate them into your own teaching plans; and
• describe how to organize instruction to maximize students’ opportunities to verbalize and clarify their ideas and also listen to and learn from each other.

The Audio Segments

Included with the lessons is online access to nine audio segments titled ＂Conversations with Marilyn.＂ In each segment, Marilyn, joined by longtime Math Solutions colleague Patty Clark, talks about teaching math. The conversations focus on topics that range from ＂What Makes a Good Problem?＂ to ＂The Meaning of Math Menus.＂ Consider them your personal conversations, meant to support you further as you plan to use the lessons with your students.

The Reproducibles

When appropriate, lessons include accompanying reproducibles, available in a downloadable, printable format to support your use of this resource.

Marilyn Burns is one of today’s most highly respected mathematics educators. Over the course of almost sixty years, Marilyn has taught children, led professional development sessions, spoken at conferences, contributed to professional journals, written a dozen books for children, and created more than twenty professional development publications for teachers and administrators. In 1984, Marilyn founded Math Solutions, dedicated to improving math teaching in Kindergarten through Grade 8. Soon after, Marilyn wrote About Teaching Mathematics, now in its 4th edition. Her other professional books include Welcome to Math Class; Math and Literature; Teaching Arithmetic; Lessons for Algebraic Thinking; Writing in Math Class; and more. Marilyn has been the recipient of numerous honors, including an honorary doctorate degree from Bank Street College of Education in New York in 1991, the Ross Taylor/Glenn Gilbert National Leadership Award from the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics in 1996, the Louise Hay Award for Contributions to Mathematics Education from the Association for Women in Mathematics in 1997, and induction in 2010 into the Educational Publishing Hall of Fame by the Association of Educational Publishers. In 2019, Marilyn received the Walter Denham Memorial Award from the California Mathematics Council in recognition of her advocacy for math education at the state and national levels. Working with Math Solutions colleagues, Marilyn has developed several important school resources. Do The Math, published in 2007, is a supplemental instructional program for building numerical reasoning. In 2012, Math Reads was published to help teachers use children’s literature for teaching mathematics. Also in 2012, Math Reasoning Inventory (MRI), a digital interview tool funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was made available to help teachers assess students in Grades 5 and up. In 2021, Listening to Learn was published, a digital interview tool that expands MRI to help teachers of Kindergarten and up learn how their students reason numerically. Do the Math Listening to Learn