Episode 229: From Just-in-Case to Just-in-Time: Rethinking Intervention for Struggling Math Students with Juliana Tapper

I got to sit down with Steve Wyborney, the brain behind Splat!, Esti-Mysteries, the Estimation Clipboard, and so many other tools I know you've used in your classroom.  In this session from Day 3 of the FROM Memorization TO Thinking Summit, Steve takes me back to where it all started: an idea for building estimation jars that flopped. We talk about what estimation really is, why he thinks the second and third estimates matter more than the first, and a simple sentence stem that you can use tomorrow to dig into how students are thinking.  Steve also shares his three-part definition of number sense and challenges us to go beyond asking kids how they got an answer, to asking what they noticed that got them there. If you want lifetime access to all the sessions from the FROM Memorization TO Thinking Summit, including this one, you can grab that at buildmathminds.com/thinking-summit/

I used to think assessment meant finding what my students didn't know - the wrong answers, the gaps, the "not yet."  Dr. Nicki Newton flips that in this session from the FROM Memorization TO Thinking Summit. Her thoughts: assessment shouldn't be about catching what kids don't know. It's about listening for what they do know.  In this episode, she shares the story of a 2nd grader who taught her more in one hand-written note than a worksheet ever could, the one question she now asks before starting any new unit, and three places an overwhelmed teacher can start this week. If you want lifetime access to all the sessions from the FROM Memorization TO Thinking Summit, including this one, you can grab that at buildmathminds.com/thinking-summit/

A look at math intervention that reframes it from "filling gaps" to "building a staircase." Juliana Tapper explains why just-in-time intervention (keeping grade-level content as the destination) outperforms the just-in-case approach most schools default to.  And why teacher expectations, not the program you pick, drives the difference.  This episode is the full length conversation I had with Juliana during Day 1 of the FROM Memorization TO Thinking Summit and it covers the pothole vs. staircase model, the research behind high expectations, and why "acceleration" isn't a dirty word in intervention. 👉 Purchase the Lifetime Access Pass: https://buildmathminds.com/thinking-summit/ 

The summit was originally envisioned to help educators move students from memorization to thinking, but the focus shifted to a more important goal: stopping the educational pendulum from swinging drastically between the two extremes. The initial movement toward exploratory thinking emerged as a backlash against rigid drill-and-practice memorization and single-procedure methods that were not working. However, allowing children to explore without structure has gone too far, prompting a pushback that threatens to swing the pendulum completely back to traditional memorization.  Rather than returning to past methods that were not good for kids, the summit conversations emphasize finding a middle ground that balances both conceptual understanding and procedural fluency. Across the three-day event, attendees will explore what this balanced approach looks like and how to implement it, starting with day-one insights and featured clips from speakers like Juliana Tapper.  https://buildmathminds.com/thinking-summit/

When's the last time you asked someone to just show you how to do something, instead of figuring it out yourself? Now flip it: how often do you ask students to just go figure something out on their own? In this episode, Christina digs into a pattern that surfaced again and again while interviewing presenters for the upcoming Math Summit: we preach productive struggle for kids, but rarely practice it ourselves. Kaneka Turner explains why "can you just teach the lesson so I can watch?" doesn't actually build the reasoning teachers need, the same reason "just tell me" doesn't work for kids either. Elham Kazemi and Allison Hintz share a deceptively simple fix for the instinct to rescue stuck kids one at a time instead of noticing patterns across the room. And Mona Iehl makes the case that kids won't productively struggle because we rarely give them the time to. Sometimes our help isn't actually helping. Christina's takeaway: struggle isn't a kid problem or a teacher problem. It's a stance toward not-knowing that applies to all of us. Resources Mentioned: Register for FREE or get Lifetime Access to the From Memorization to Thinking Summit (Aug 10-12): https://buildmathminds.com/thinking-summit/

Picture two teachers: one runs "I do, we do, you do" with a focus on math procedures. The other hands kids an open problem and steps back entirely. Both are stuck at opposite ends of the same pendulum swing. In this episode, I unpack a theme that kept surfacing across my interviews for the upcoming From Memorization to Thinking summit: math ed keeps overcorrecting. We ditched rote memorization for conceptual understanding (good move) but now practice itself is treated like a dirty word. We opened up "any strategy is fine" (good instinct) but without efficiency and flexibility, that's not real fluency. The fear: the pendulum doesn't settle in the middle. It swings all the way back to drill-and-tell. Christina walks through how Sarah Schaefer, Mike Flynn, Becky Lord, Kevin Dykema, and Zak Champagne each hit this same idea from a different angle, and what it means for getting the pendulum to actually rest with structure and flexibility, together. Resources Mentioned: Register for FREE or get Lifetime Access to the From Memorization to Thinking Summit (August 10-12): https://buildmathminds.com/thinking-summit/

In this episode, I'm making a confession: there's a free, research-backed guide for helping struggling math students that I haven't done a good job of telling you about and I've found that most educators have never even heard of. It's the 2021 Institute of Education Sciences and What Works Clearinghouse practice guide, Assisting Students Struggling with Mathematics, and all six of its recommendations earned the WWC's highest rating: Strong Evidence. I share why this guide stands apart from the usual opinion-driven debates in elementary math, give you a quick tour of what's inside (including one recommendation guaranteed to raise some eyebrows), and explain why working through it together as a summer book study beats reading the PDF alone. If you want a clear, evidence-based picture of what actually helps your struggling students before the school year starts, consider this your invitation. Join the free 3-week summer book study: https://buildmathminds.com/bookstudy26

After 26 years, Susan Jo Russell's three-part definition of math fluency - accuracy, efficiency, and flexibility - is finally making its way into state math standards. In this episode, I'm celebrating this long-overdue shift, highlighting recent updates in Washington State and Iowa that now explicitly include flexibility alongside accuracy and efficiency in their fluency standards. Using a relatable cooking analogy, I break down why flexibility isn't just nice-to-have - it's the difference between students who can only follow a procedure and students who can truly think mathematically. I also share where you can learn more to help you make this shift in your own classroom, school, district, or even your state. Let me know whether your state has made this change, head to the comments to let me know where you and your state stands!

After 10 years of running the Virtual Math Summit, here's what I've learned: what matters isn't the objective you planned. It's the residue - what actually gets left behind once it's over.  My objective in creating the summit all those years ago was to help you build your math mind…but the residue isn't always something about the mathematics. Last weekend we wrapped up the 10th annual Virtual Math Summit. Over a million minutes of PD watched in just two days. And this week I went through the survey results to find out what residue people were actually taking away. In this episode I share the six themes that kept showing up - from the power of listening to student thinking, to the confidence to just start implementing now even when you don't feel ready, to what the neuroscience of math actually tells us about how kids learn. I also share one form of residue that I never thought about when I started the summit, but it might just be the most important. Sessions are still free through Monday, March 9th at 10pm Pacific. Go to VirtualMathSummit.com to register and I'll send you the link to watch the replays before they come down.

Most educators who want math to be taught conceptually are the only one in their building trying to do it. They go to a workshop, get excited, and come back on Monday to a team still teaching algorithms and admin who wants scores to go up. The excitement fades and not because the idea was wrong, but because doing hard things alone is exhausting. In this episode, the last one before the 10th annual Virtual Math Summit, I talk about why that isolation is the real barrier to change in math classrooms, and why community matters more than information. I also share what I've seen happen over 10 years of the summit: the thing educators say most isn't "I learned a great strategy." It's "I finally felt like I wasn't the only one." So pick your one thing you want to learn about and get registered for the 2026 Virtual Math Summit (Feb 28 – Mar 1) so you can find your community. There are 34 free sessions, keynotes from Dr. Kristopher Childs, Dr. Raj Shah, Pam Harris, and Graham Fletcher, free Brainingcamp access for all registrants, and giveaways during live sessions. Register free at VirtualMathSummit.com