Being an effective math educator is one part based on the quality of the tasks we give, one part of how we diagnose what we see, and one part what we do with what we find. Yet with so many students and big concepts to cover, it can be hard to slow down enough to look for those moments when students’ responses tell us what we need to know about the next best steps. In this book, John SanGiovanni helps us value our students’ misconceptions and incomplete understandings as much as their correct ones―because it’s the gap in their understanding today that holds the secrets to planning tomorrow’s best teaching.

SanGiovanni lays out 180 high-quality tasks assigned to the standards and big ideas of grades 3-5 mathematics, including addition and subtraction of multi-digit whole numbers, multiplication and division of single and multi-digit whole numbers, foundational fraction concepts and more. The tasks are all downloadable so you can use or modify them for instruction and assessment.

It’s time to break our habit of rushing into re-teaching for the correctness and instead get curious about the space between right and wrong answers.