Make Math Happen

How proportional reasoning prepares students for modeling

Over the past three months, we’ve built something intentional.

Geometry helped students see structure.
Number systems helped them understand magnitude.
Ratios helped them recognize relationships.

In this episode, we bring it all together.

Proportional reasoning is not the end goal. It’s the bridge. Before students ever graph a line or write an equation, they must see pat...

Rates, Tables, Tape Diagrams, and the Coordinate Plane

Ratios are relationships. But proportional reasoning is what happens when students learn to use those relationships to solve problems.

In this episode, we move from identifying ratios to reasoning with them. You’ll explore how tape diagrams, ratio tables, double number lines, and the coordinate plane make proportional relationships visible before formulas ever appear. Geometry sh...

Before students can work flexibly with ratios, they must be able to answer a more fundamental question: What exactly are we comparing, and why?

In this episode, we zoom in on the core comparison structures that sit beneath ratios, proportions, geometry, and algebra: part-to-part relationships, part-to-whole relationships, and unit reasoning. You’ll hear how these ways of thinking develop over time, how they connect back to geometry ...

Why ratios are about how quantities move together

This episode launches our Connecting Math series by reframing ratios as relationships rather than calculations. Instead of treating ratios as fractions or procedures to memorize, we explore how ratios describe how two quantities vary together and why that way of thinking must be developed over time.

Building on December’s focus on Seeing Math and January’s work around Understanding Ma...

How strong number reasoning prepares students for ratios and algebra

Throughout January, we’ve explored rational numbers, negative numbers, distance, value, fractions, decimals, and division. On the surface, it may seem like this month was about numbers.

But this work didn’t begin in January.

In December, we focused on seeing math—using geometry to help students notice structure, reason about space, and make sense of relationships bef...

Building understanding instead of teaching tricks

Many students reach middle school able to perform fraction and decimal procedures without truly understanding what those numbers represent. In this episode, we slow down and reconnect fractions, decimals, and division to meaning.

We explore why fractions should be understood as division first, how the number line supports flexible movement between representations, and why spatial reas...

Strategies that clarify the number line for every learner

Negative numbers are often taught through rules that don’t stick. In this episode, we return to meaning.

We explore how students have been reasoning about space, direction, and position on the number line since the earliest grades, and why negative numbers are an extension of that work—not a new concept. By grounding integer operations in movement and distance, this episode sh...

When students struggle with fractions, decimals, and integers, it’s often assumed they’re missing skills. In reality, they’re missing understanding.

This episode opens our Understanding Math series by focusing on how students make sense of rational numbers as quantities that have value, direction, and position—not just symbols to manipulate. We explore how early experiences with counting, comparing, and representing numbers develop ...

This episode closes our geometry focus by showing how similarity and scale serve as the bridge into ratios, proportions, and later functions. We explore what makes figures similar, how scale factor represents a preserved relationship rather than a formula, and why students need visual experiences with enlargement and reduction before working with numbers.

Along the way, we address real classroom challenges, including unfinished lear...

This episode continues our Season 4 focus on making connections across mathematical domains and across grade levels. My goal over the coming months is to spark deeper conversations about instruction, sequencing, and sense-making, and to support teachers in taking these ideas back to their professional learning communities.

Area, surface area, and volume are often taught as a list of formulas, but students need a much richer story. I...

Helping students make sense of transformations and symmetry

Geometry becomes powerful when students can see how shapes move, change, and relate. In this episode, we explore angles, lines, and the three core transformations—translations, reflections, and rotations—and what students must understand long before they ever touch coordinate rules.

You’ll hear how early geometry experiences lay the groundwork for middle school expectations,...

Spatial reasoning is the heartbeat of middle school mathematics. In this episode, we explore how seeing patterns, shapes, movement, and structure primes students for success across every domain they’ll encounter this year. You’ll learn why geometry is far more than formulas and how it builds the visual foundation students need for ratios, functions, number lines, and equations. This episode opens the journey we’ll take all year. By...

This special episode closes out the month and reflects on the entire journey of this podcast. Four years ago, this show launched as PD for the Soul with a simple mission: to give teachers bite-sized, meaningful professional development they could listen to in the middle of real life. Whether it was on the way to work, during planning, or while cleaning the house, the goal was always the same… walk away with one idea you could use i...

The last five minutes of class might be the most powerful. In this final episode of the instructional framework series, Laneshia breaks down the Closure portion of the lesson: the moment where big ideas get consolidated, strategies are named, and learning comes full circle.

You’ll hear how teachers can use this time to:

• Revisit strategies and construct anchor charts that capture the day’s thinking
• Invite students to reflect on the...

Last week, we broke down the Instruct phase — how to plan lessons like a chef curating a recipe, balancing tasks, facilitation, and engagement to make learning stick.

This week, I’m serving up the next course: what Instruct actually sounds like in action. I’m sharing a real lesson I planned, facilitated, and reflected on using the Thinking Through a Lesson Protocol (TTLP) — a “Build a Pizza” task that pushed students to reason about...

Every strong math lesson has a recipe — the right balance of tasks, facilitation, and engagement that brings learning to life.

In this episode, Laneshia walks you through the Instruct portion of the lesson cycle like a master chef planning a meal. You’ll learn how to:

• Choose and sequence tasks that align with standards and build coherence across lessons.
• Facilitate learning through intentional routines that get students talking, r...

Before you ever step into a lesson, your planning determines how far students can go. In this episode, Laneshia breaks down what it means to zoom out to zoom in—strategically mapping upcoming units, identifying potential roadblocks, and pre-teaching (or accelerating) just enough to keep every learner in the fast lane.

You’ll hear how Suzy Pepper Rollins’ concept of acceleration aligns with research by Burns (2004), Nelson (2022), an...

Before students ever dive into a new concept, the Activate portion of your lesson determines whether they’re truly ready to think. In this episode, Laneshia models what an intentional Activate sounds like—from synthesizing a spiral warm-up to launching a new problem about dividing fractions with and without models. You’ll hear how she uses questioning, routines, and strategic sequencing to make sense-making visible and connect to t...

Six weeks into the school year, the cracks start to show — the fatigue, the frustration, and the quiet slide into low expectations. In this episode of Make Math Happen, Laneshia gets real about the dangerous drift toward deficit thinking and the power of collective teacher efficacy to turn it around.

Drawing from John Hattie’s Visible Learning research — where collective teacher efficacy ranks at an effect size of 1.57, the most inf...