Motivation Math uses "active teaching" methods to guide students to success

Critical thinking activities and practice of math skills help promote understanding of mathematics

As an educator, you need research-based math strategies and products to help improve your students’ math skills. 

Whether you need to motivate your students and give them a positive attitude towards math, develop essential math skills, or increase your students’ math literacy and vocabulary, you will find products here that will help.

Motivation Math:

Mentoring Minds created Motivation Math as a response to the many known challenges to teaching math and getting students to understand the subject and perform well on state standardized tests. Drawing on contemporary research of student learning capabilities and teaching methods, Motivation Math is based on the idea that motivated, engaged and interested students comprehend subject matter better and thus earn higher test scores. In meeting Common Core Standards, it is important for students to not only perform at their highest level, but also to retain and carry the critical thinking skills with them as they progress through the grade levels and on to various colleges and careers.

Common Core Standards emphasize mathematics because it is such a universally important subject on which the current globalized world relies in many ways. The ways students learn math from an early age impacts their ability to build on their knowledge and skill sets later on. This is why it is important to introduce foundational skills and critical thinking methods early in their educational development.

Motivation Math also utilizes methods of "active teaching," which includes instruction directed by teachers that evolves in small, manageable steps. Educators guide their students through different levels in the learning process, including introducing them to skills, guiding them through practice of those skills, giving opportunities for independent practice, conducting assessments, instructing them through critical thinking activities, and assigning homework with parent activities.

Mentoring Minds also offers tools for teaching critical thinking and math skills through the Response to Intervention (RtI) approach. This method is used to identify students who are at risk of falling behind in academic subjects and social interactions because of their unique learning or behavioral needs. By utilizing RtI tools offered by Mentoring Minds, educators, parents and special education teachers can ensure that every student is provided with instruction and assignments that they can successfully process and complete.

Motivation Math…

• Provides teaching resources that promote effective, engaging direct instruction
• Complements direct instruction with powerful, focused practice on math strategies and math assessment strategies
• Reflects the rigor and complexity of standardized tests

Improve your students’ math proficiency with Motivation Math now!

Math Essentials:

Math Essentials is a comprehensive supplemental resource for the development of essential math skills through an open-ended response format and offers students elementary math problem-solving strategies.

Constructed-response practice pages are included for Number and Operations, Algebra, Geometry, Measurement, Statistics and Probability, and Problem-Solving.

Math Essentials …

• Allows teachers to identify error patterns and apply appropriate interventions for innovative problem solving
• Teaches problem solving strategies to encourage students to reflect, extend, and refine thinking
• Requires students to verbalize their thinking

Learn more about how Math Essentials can help your students improve their math skills.

Math Vocabulary Adventure offers math literacy strategies:

Math Vocabulary Adventure is a unique instructional tool that incorporates mathematics vocabulary, innovative problem solving, critical thinking, and journaling.

Because direct instruction of content vocabulary provides the essential background knowledge needed to build student math achievement, Math Vocabulary Adventure can be used as a complement to any mathematics program. The innovative math program is a valuable resource for teachers planning to implement a systematic program of vocabulary instruction in mathematics to improve math literacy.

Vocabulary Adventure…

• Utilizes Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Incorporates engaging problem-solving activities
• Enhances vocabulary meaning with depth and complexity
• Reinforces and enhances the comprehension of mathematics vocabulary