Our Mission
Numeracy Consultants takes a back-to-basics approach to teaching mathematics. Our focus is entirely on the K-5 curriculum. In order for students to understand advanced concepts, they must first have a solid numeracy foundation.
Our math intervention programs and assessment systems focus on basic numeracy strategies and skills. Task analysis must be done to break down each concept into a smaller teachable skill. Once the skills are identified, teachers are shown how to provide high quality instruction.
We believe in a teaching philosophy that lays out a clear order of individual skills that must be mastered before students are ready for complex abstract concepts like money, time, multiple digit addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, and fractions.
Intervention and MTSS
Numeracy Consultants provides the tools that teachers need for a successful intervention program with MTSS (Multi-Tier Systems of Support). Assessment is crucial to student success. In our math intervention workshops, teachers learn how to administer quick numeracy assessments so they can use the results to guide their instruction.
In many schools a math intervention is just assigning students more practice problems. Students struggle with current skills because something is missing from their foundation. We show teachers how to develop basic skills and lay a foundation for more advanced concepts.
The assessments and the learning framework work well with any RTI/ MTSS model. The pre and post-test assessments and rubrics make documentation very easy for classroom, special education teachers, and support staff.
The Need For Training
In classrooms today, mathematics is often taught through memorization of a process. Students are shown how to do a process. They practice it many times but often there is no real understanding behind what they are doing. Students may be able to solve problems in isolation, but when asked to apply that knowledge in a higher level of thinking, they are unable to solve the task.
Many teachers are unaware that the strategies they use may focus more on process than on understanding. When teachers spend more instructional time on procedural processes then on conceptual understanding, large holes develop within the curriculum. This is especially true when a student already struggles with mathematics. If the gaps within the curriculum are not filled it does nothing but grow as the student gets older.