Helps with: priming students to think about the EF skills they bring to class that day and provides explicit examples of how they are engaging in mathematical activity; also orients students to consider the variety of EFs their peers may have

Use When: you are launching a task within a lesson, or at the start of your class period when discussing the learning objectives for the day

Example: A teacher is launching a task about unit rate and ratios and setting up the class to engage in group work. As they are describing the activity for the day, they say, “Today’s activity will use our EF skills in many different ways, so we’ll need everyone’s individual contributions to succeed as a group. If you are someone who can help keep track of lots of different numbers, your group will benefit from your working memory strengths today. Today we’ll also be asking everyone in a group to share their thinking at some point, so we’ll need someone’s cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control strengths to help us stay organized and able to reflect on how different strategies might be able to be used to tackle this problem.”  

Note: Consider leveraging the SMPxEF Crosswalk (also shared below) to identify opportunities in your lessons where this routine may be a good fit.

Helps with: developing students’ skills around setting goals, making plans, and assessing their own progress towards their goals; this can build agency in their own learning journey and strengthens students’ metacognitive processing

Use When: at anchor points throughout a lesson or unit (beginning, middle, and end), or when facilitating a discussion with individual students or small groups

Example: During a discussion or when students are working on a problem, teachers may adapt the following prompts to support students in reflecting on their reasoning and their problem solving processes:

1. 1. What is the problem asking you to do? What tools or strategies could you use?

   2. Is your current strategy working? Why or why not? 

   3. What can you tell me about [the content or problem context]?

   4. How did you figure out how to solve this problem? What worked for you, and what didn’t work that caused you to try new things?

Helps with: supporting student’s engagement of all three main EF skills - inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, while building reasoning skills and connecting math concepts

Use When: throughout lessons or units on a regular cadence, as providing a structure for students to develop their reasoning can help them take up the same strategies and apply it to new content or other activities long term

Example: create opportunities throughout solving a problem for students to:

1. 1. Identify a pattern and describe what’s happening

   2. Predict what the next step in the pattern would be

   3. Write a rule for the pattern, using descriptive sentences first as needed, before moving to other representations

   4. Discuss what repeats or changes across each step in the pattern, and which quantities stay the same

   5. Create their own patterns (option to set conditions the pattern has to meet to vary the difficulty of this task)

Provide scaffolding for students across a variety of levels, and emphasize that the goal for students should be to use the scaffolds they need that day to help them be successful. Consider asking students to check in with themselves at the beginning of the day or the class period to think about how they are feeling, and if there are EFs they might need more support with that day.

Create opportunities for students to collaborate with peers in various settings and formats (small group, pairs/partners, etc). Provide guidance and roles for each person in a collaborative group, and ask the group to set process goals and reflect on those goals at the beginning and end of the collaborative time. Collaboration requires deeply engaging your EF skills, so providing structures can support cognitive load and student agency.

Understanding the ways students use their EF skills when engaging in mathematical activity can help identify opportunities in your mathematics instruction to attend to or leverage student EF strengths. This resource, created by the Mathematical Thinkers Like Me R&D project team from the EF+Math Program, breaks down the Standards for Mathematical Practice and identifies EF skills that may be demonstrated by students in each SMP. View their SMPxEF Crosswalk.

• Use visual cues and multiple representations where possible, such as anchor charts, number lines, and checklists

• “Chunk” directions into shorter sections, each connected to clear goals to help students monitor their progress and readiness to move forward.

• Emphasize making thinking visible throughout a problem, either through writing or talking with a peer. Consider trying this at the start of solving a problem, not just the end.

• Encourage students to take multiple solution paths. Model different ways to start a problem and invite students to generate their own. At the end of a problem, have students share their approaches and facilitate a discussion of the benefits of each. 

  1. Please note - there is no “right way” to solve a problem. Please take the time needed to anticipate multiple solution paths when planning for a lesson, and practice identifying what mathematical brilliance each strategy demonstrates. 

  2. Probing Questions: 

     1. What connections are being made by solving a problem this way?

     2. What information is visible or easily accessible through this method? 

• When launching tasks, consider engaging in a class brainstorm of how a particular problem type relates to other or previous problem types. Support students in looking for structure across the mathematics content or opportunities for repeated reasoning. 

  1. “How is this problem similar or different from the previous?”

• Embed “estimate and check” routines regularly. Ask students to anticipate strategies or estimate solutions for a problem and “check” their estimation, such as, “Does this estimate fit what I know about…” 

• Remember that supporting inhibitory control is not about managing or controlling student behavior. Find ways to reframe your language with students to invite them to reflect on their attention and engagement towards the task or goal at hand, and identify what they might need. This may include taking time to reset and refocus, working through something outside of the math task at hand, or inviting that student to set a new goal with you.