Shaped

A community-driven blog supporting educators, building lifelong learners,
and shaping the future of education.* 

Latest Posts

illustrated image on a graph

Teach students about graphing along the x and y axis on coordinate graphs as a visual method for showing relationships between numbers.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

Teaching solid figures triangular prism drawing hero

In this lesson, students will explore the parts that make up solid figures, including edges, faces, and vertices.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

Teaching math to ells hero

These ELL strategies for math instruction will help you with teaching math to English language learners and supporting math learning for multilingual students.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

Teaching quadrant numbers on a graph hero point

With this math lesson, you can teach students about coordinates, integers, coordinate planes, and functions on a graph.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

Teaching about classifying polygons

Teach students about the different types of polygons in mathematics, which can be described as flat, closed figures with three or more sides.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

Teaching with place value charts tens units hero

A place-value system is one in which the position of a digit in a number determines its value, and a place-value chart is a way to make sure digits are in the correct places.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

Teaching flat plane shapes circles squares hero

Teach students about plane shapes, or closed, two-dimensional figures, and solid shapes, which include many of the everyday objects with which students are familiar.

Shaped Staff

Math classroom routines talk moves hero image

Five routines are provided to help math teachers establish routines and promote mathematical discussions this school year. The routines consist of four Talk Moves and one language routine.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

Teaching product prime factors hero factor tree

In this lesson, use factor trees to teach students the concept that a composite number is written as a product of all of its prime factors.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

iPad with image of Shaped blog content

Find free teaching resources. Explore fun classroom activities, lessons plans, downloadables, and videos for Grade K–12 kids to keep learning and growing at grade level.

Shaped Staff

Teaching rational numbers decimals fractions hero

Use this lesson to teach students about rational numbers, including decimals, fractions, and integers.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

illustrated image with multiplication problems in text

Use this lesson to teach students about the order of operations: complete operations in parentheses, multiply and divide from left to right, and add and subtract from left to right.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

Girl smiling as she is writing in her classroom workbook

Here are inside tips from Into Math writers, coaches, and experts, on how to make the most of our core K–8 math program.

Shaped Staff

Financial literacy month hero

Use these financial literacy lesson plans and activities for middle school to teach students about topics ranging from salaries to wages to creating a personal budget.

Shaped Staff

Math at the met numbers hero

Use this video to teach numbers and expressions in math class by investigating how different numbers look around the world and throughout history at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

Prime factor tree factorization 36 hero2

When a composite number (like 36) is written as a product of all of its prime factors, we have the prime factorization of the number.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

illustrated image of 3 fish bowls

When teaching students about dividend, divisor, and quotient in division, introduce algorithms that will allow them to divide larger numbers.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

Teaching absolute value equation thermometer hero

Teaching absolute value can help students understand the distance of a number on the number line from zero, regardless of the direction from zero that the number lies.

Shaped Staff

*The views expressed in our blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of HMH.