Math Teacher Lounge episode: Howie Hua on making math viral

K—12 math instruction has come a long way from having students memorize times tables. Thanks to innovative instructors like Howie Hua, it’s gone all the way to TikTok. And it’s gone viral. 

Bethany Lockhart Johnson and Dan Meyer recently talked to Howie Hua on Math Teacher Lounge—now a podcast!

Meet Howie Hua

Howie Hua is a lecturer at Fresno State. He teaches math to future elementary math teachers. That’s a good thing, because he doesn’t just make math “come alive.” He makes it go viral. 

He has more than 32,000 followers on TikTok (@howie_hua), where his brief, punchy math explainer videos have garnered nearly 500,000 likes. 

That’s why Bethany Lockhart Johnson was so excited to talk to him on the podcast, she says. “He is inviting us to think about how we ask questions in mathematics in ways that get people buzzing. His ideas and thoughts have gone viral and people are in conversation in a way that we long for them to be, out in the streets shouting about mathematics.”

(Fun fact: Hua can also throw a rifle 15 feet in the air, do a back flip, and catch it. Don’t believe us? Check out his TikTok.)

Questions are as important as answers

“I think people don’t want to watch a 20-minute YouTube video on something math-related. Maybe they just want a short one-minute explainer,” says Hua. 

Even in one minute, Hua shines new light on math functions and concepts—and more. 

“People want to understand what’s actually happening,” says Hua. “For example, I got so many nice comments when I explained the long division algorithm. I said, ‘Let’s visualize it.’ It’s not just connecting the permutation and the combination formulas. People want to know what’s happening rather than just ‘Use this formula to get an answer.’”

Dan Meyer shares a couple of Hua’s most popular TikToks: 

  • Test Talk: Reduce test anxiety by having students talk in a group about a test for five minutes before putting pencil to paper. 
  • How do you calculate … ? In his Mental Math Mondays series, Hua asks viewers to tell him exactly how they solve a given arithmetic problem. “One of my favorite hobbies is to listen to how people think about math,” says Hua. “So if you want to make my day, comment or stitch this video with how you would calculate 17 plus 18 in your head.”

Hua says that to ask “Hey, how would you think about this?” does more than give him insight. Asking questions helps build community, and shows people that there are many ways to arrive at an answer. 

Says Hua: “It really goes to show that math is a creative subject. ‘Hey, can we find another way? What’s another way that we can do this?’ I tell my students, the beauty is in us, not the final answer.” 

Join the challenge

Here’s Hua’s Math Teacher Lounge challenge for this episode: 

  1. Walk around and find something that you can count, take a picture, and then ask around: “Hey, how would you count these?”  See if their way is the same as yours—or if it blows your mind.
  2. Share your pictures and thoughts by tagging us (@MTLShow) and Howie (@Howie_Hua) on Twitter, and sharing them in the Math Teacher Lounge Facebook group as well. 

Bonus: Did you do the daily Wordle before you read this post? You might have learned something about teaching math—listen to the podcast to find out why (and to hear why on earth Dan Meyer would start his guesses with “PYGMY”)

The Math Teacher Lounge podcast is available on all major streaming platforms and on mathteacherlounge.com. Math Teacher Lounge is presented by Amplify and Desmos. Visit Amplify’s website to find out more about Amplify Math. 

How teachers can address math anxiety

How teachers can address math anxiety

No one is born knowing the quadratic formula, or how to measure a triangle—math needs to be taught.

Likewise, no one is born a “math person”—or not a math person. And no one is born with math anxiety.

“Children don’t come with math anxiety,” says Dr. Rosemarie Truglio, senior vice president of curriculum and content for Sesame Workshop and a guest on Math Teacher Lounge. “Math anxiety is learned.” That’s actually good news because it means math anxiety can be unlearned, too. We can teach students (and even teachers) how to overcome it. In this post, we’ll cover some helpful learning strategies, teacher tips, and supports for caregivers.

Anxiety in—and beyond—the math classroom

First, let’s review what math anxiety is and is not.

Math anxiety is more than just finding math challenging, or feeling like you’re not a math person. Dr. Gerardo Ramirez, associate professor of educational psychology at Ball State University, defines it as “a fear or apprehension in situations that might involve math or situations that you perceive as involving math. Anything from tests to homework to paying a tip at a restaurant.” Here’s what else we know:

  • Causes: Math anxiety is not correlated with high or low skill or performance. For students who’ve been pressured to excel, math anxiety comes with the fear of not meeting expectations. For students who historically haven’t done well in math, the anxiety comes with the assumption they’ll do poorly every time. Other triggers include a mismatch between learning and teaching styles that can lead to struggle, or false cultural messages like “girls aren’t good at math.”
  • Consequences: People who suffer from math anxiety may deliberately avoid math, the consequences of which are obvious and far-reaching: not learning math at all, thus limiting academic success, career options, and even social experiences and connections. (This webinar mentions real-life—and relatable—examples of adults affected by math anxiety.)
  • Prevalence: Math anxiety affects at least 20 percent of students, and parents and teachers can suffer from math anxiety, too. In fact, some research suggests that when teachers have math anxiety, it’s more likely that some of their students will as well. Luckily, those teachers and parents can also play a key role in helping students (and maybe even themselves) get more comfortable with math.

Addressing math anxiety in the classroom

Math anxiety can arise from the contexts and cultures in which students encounter math, so it makes sense that we can also create conditions that can help reduce it—and even prevent it from taking hold. Here are some key strategies for helping even the most math-anxious students thrive:

  • Invite explicit conversation about math anxiety. In this webinar, Math Teacher Lounge podcast co-host Bethany Lockhart Jones recommends having open and direct conversations with all students about how doing math makes them feel. “The more you know about your students’ ‘math stories,’ the more you can help them,” she says.
  • Build a positive, supportive, and collaborative math community where different learning styles and incorrect answers—often fuel for math anxiety—are considered part of the learning process. Embracing and working from wrong answers encourages students to focus on the “how” of math. Students feel more comfortable asking questions, taking risks, and making mistakes (as well as learning from them).

How do you build a supportive environment in your math classroom?

  • Cultivate a growth mindset. Create a culture where mistakes are not just acceptable, but inevitable—even welcomed. Encourage perseverance and persistence. Emphasize that being challenged by a math concept doesn’t mean a student is inherently bad at math or just can’t do it.  It means only that they can’t do it yet.
  • Encourage collaboration. Promote a culture of cooperation and teamwork by incorporating group activities, peer support, and class discussions into your lessons.
  • Play. Game-ifying problems and introducing friendly competition builds camaraderie and helps students find shared joy in math—a win-win!
  • Give students plenty of time. Alleviating the pressure of time constraints allows students to think more deeply, take brain breaks, make fewer rushed errors, and develop a sense of control and confidence. Here are some ways to build time into your math lessons:
    • Allow students ample time to think when you ask them questions.
    • Allow students to work on assignments in class with support and take them home to finish if they need more time.
    • Consider giving tests and quizzes in two parts and allowing students to complete them over multiple days.
  • Create a culture of revisions. Allowing students to revise homework assignments and tests/quizzes for partial credit will remind them that learning math is a process, not a mandate to get everything right the first time. This will help them deepen their understanding by learning from and correcting their errors—and remind them that mistakes are part of growth.
  • Use intentional language. The phrase “This is easy” might sound encouraging, but anxious students may hear it as “You should be able to do this.” Instead, use supportive, objective language such as “This problem is similar to when we…” or “Try using this strategy.”

Addressing math anxiety at home

Caregivers may be accustomed to reading to students at home, but sitting together and doing math? Probably less so. Some caregivers may even inadvertently perpetuate math anxiety—or the ideas that feed it—by repeating some of the associated stereotypes and misconceptions. (“Sorry, kiddo, grandpa’s not a math person.”)

Teachers can address this by sending materials home to support caregivers in engaging kids in math. Math games, for example, offer a fun, accessible opportunity for home practice—and they can even be played at bedtime, along with story time.

In general, teachers can also encourage caregivers to:

  • Use and point out their use of math in the real world wherever possible.
  • Help with math homework as much as possible.
  • Use intentional, positive phrasing about math—including about their own use of it.

Teachers have the ability to reduce math anxiety and help students unlearn the stereotypes associated with it by building a positive math ecosystem. They can build a positive community in their math classroom, set caregivers up for success in supporting students at home, and even shine a light on their own relationship to math.

To learn more, tune in to Season 5 of Math Teacher Lounge, dive into our math webinars, and read the rest of our math blog.

Defining math fluency with Jason Zimba

When we think of fluency, especially as a goal, we might think of speaking or reading a language. But fluency is also a goal in learning math! So what is math fluency? And what does it look like in the math classroom? In Season 6, Episode 1 of our Math Teacher Lounge podcast, Amplify’s own Jason Zimba helps us understand—using some analogies to baseball and chicken, of course.

Definitions of math fluency

We can develop fluency in many things, from coding to cooking. On the Math Teacher Lounge podcast, Amplify Chief Academic Officer of STEM Jason Zimba recounted becoming fluent in…roast chicken. 

Jason describes practicing one particular recipe until it was perfect. For Jason, that meant not just that the outcome was flawless or delicious, but that he was eventually able to make it from memory, without thinking—and to naturally adjust and calculate for variables like a smaller or larger chicken, or an unfamiliar oven. 

Math fluency works the same way. Practice brings effortlessness—freeing up time and mind space for new opportunities. 

The word “fluency” comes from the Latin fluentia, which means “flowing.” When applied to math, it means ”skill in carrying out procedures flexibly, accurately, efficiently, and appropriately,” says podcast host and math teacher and advocate Dan Meyer. As with someone fluent in a language (or a recipe), someone fluent in math is able to think and calculate mathematically without struggle or effort—that is, with fluidity. 

Podcast host and elementary educator Bethany Lockhart Johnson adds this informal description: “It’s that thing you don’t even think about anymore. ‘Cause it’s in there. You’re not still thinking about addition facts, because you’ve got it. And it fuels you. It’s the foundation that allows you to do all the other cool stuff.”

Fluency in the math classroom

What does fluency look like in practice? A young learner fluent in math will be able to smoothly recite the number word list in order (“one, two, three…”) and write the numerals from 0 to 9. As the student grows, so does their fluency with multi-digit calculation, rational-number arithmetic, and eventually even variable expressions. 

“It’s a wordless but still somehow almost verbal sort of fluency, with properties of operations as the grammar of the language,” says Jason.

But “it’s not fact recall,” he says. “Recall is remembering or just knowing. Fluency refers to calculation.”

Why and how to improve math fluency

There are different paths to fluency, but all can lead to “conceptual richness and mathematical joy,” says Dan.

If fluency provides that crucial foundation, what happens to students who are not math-fluent? 

“When kids don’t have access to [fluency], it keeps them from diving into the juicy parts of math,” says Bethany. “Math is so much bigger than addition facts, but when they don’t know those addition facts, that becomes all math is.” 

Without fluency, students miss opportunities to progress in (and enjoy) math, and may even develop math anxiety. 

So how can you support math students in developing fluency? 

For one thing, it’s important not to underestimate the value of practice and repetition. These approaches—especially when used in combination with other, more organic modes—can be highly productive, says Jason. “I worry about whether discomfort with repetitive practice is short-changing students of the power and confidence that fluency can bring.”

Dan compares it to achieving excellence in a sport—”like shooting from the same spot on the court over and over again,” he says. That kind of rote repetition is valuable in sports, and should also have its place in math instruction. 

It’s also important for students to understand why they’re learning and even drilling their numbers, arithmetic, or times tables, Jason notes. They need to be “invested in understanding and agreeing that this is going to do something for them.” 

One thing that helps: providing students a sense that they’ve accomplished something. “We need to have moments for them to reflect on what has been learned and what is now easy that was previously hard,” Dan says. He calls this process “humanizing fluency”—and Math Teacher Lounge will be here all season to help math educators do just that.

Save the date

Join us at NCTM in October for a live Math Teacher Lounge podcast recording with Dan Meyer and special guest Jennifer Bay-Williams! We’ll be investigating math fluency and finding fun ways to get all students engaged in math instruction. 

Math Teacher Lounge LIVE!
NCTM | Oct. 27 | 2:30 p.m. EST (doors at 2:15) | Room 158AB

More to explore

Collaborative learning strategies in math

Why is collaborative learning important?

Just ask this third grader: “It is important to work together, because when you work together you can get smarter by other people’s ideas.”

That just about sums it up!

Let’s take a closer look at what math looks like in a collaborative classroom, why collaboration matters, and how teachers can build a culture of collaboration for their K–8 math students.

What is collaborative learning in mathematics education?

Kristin Gray, executive director of Amplify’s math suite, is a veteran math teacher. (The answer above came from one of her very astute third graders.) And according to her, collaboration in math is so much more than just kids chatting. Gray paints a picture of collaborative math learning in elementary math and beyond as kids who are:

  • Grouped around a table, not isolated at separate desks.
  • Engaging in animated conversation.
  • Explaining their thinking and justifying their answers.
  • Comparing their various approaches.
  • Connecting math to their own lived experiences.
  • Connecting their ideas to the ideas of others.

Taken together, collaboration supports connections—among experiences, math concepts, and others’ ideas and experiences.

Collaboration means making the time and space to take these widely varied things that each student brings uniquely to our math classroom and bring them out in a really safe and collaborative culture.

– Kristin Gray, executive director of Amplify’s math suite

Why is collaborative learning important in math?

Substantial research shows that collaborative learning promotes active learning, critical thinking, communication skills, social development, a positive learning environment, deeper understanding of concepts, and preparation for real-life situations.

Gray cites a few findings in particular:

  • A 2014 NCTM study found that mathematical conversations and discourse among students—at all grade and ability levels—helps build a shared understanding of mathematical ideas.
  • Hope A. Walter’s article “Beyond Turn and Talk: Creating discourse” (Teaching Children Mathematics, 2018) asserted that meaningful math discourse supports metacognition and teaches students how to discuss, debate, and reevaluate mathematical situations in a respectful manner .
  • A 2018 NCTM study found that when students have the chance to analyze and compare each other’s approaches, any sense of hierarchy in the classroom is reduced and replaced with a classroom culture that values input from all students.

Hands-on math activities and more: Components of a collaborative classroom

What conditions best set up a math class for collaboration?

Above all, students need hands-on activities that truly engage—or, in Gray’s words, “tasks worth talking about.” Teachers should emphasize the importance of the process of getting to the answer, encouraging the sharing of “rough draft ideas” that students can develop together. Gray also recommends stopping the groups’ conversations before they’re done, so that they can reflect on what they’re doing rather than just report what they did.

Other resources:

Problem-based learning offers a powerful approach to collaborative learning in math. Our guide around making the shift to problem-based learning through Learning Labs will walk teachers through what problem-based learning is, why it’s critical to math instruction, and how to support the shift to this approach through Learning Labs. A tried-and-true STEM strategy that Gray has often used with teachers, Learning Labs break the typical mold of siloed professional development days by encouraging collaborative professional learning within the classroom!

Desmos Classroom lessons

Desmos Classroom activities let students share their thinking with each other. The teacher dashboard provides educators a window into this thinking in real time, as well as a powerful toolkit to turn those ideas into still more productive conversations and effective learning. Check out all the Featured Collections Desmos Classroom has to offer.

More to explore

Implementing math fluency games

OK, shuffle the deck and draw four cards. Place them face up, in no particular order. Your job: pair them into two-digit numbers with the lowest possible difference between them.

If you draw a 3, a 9, and two 8s, you’re not going to want to make them into 98 and 38. 89 and 83 might be a better move.

Whatever pairs you create, you’re likely more engaged by this challenge than you might have been by the invitation: “Let’s practice subtracting two-digit numbers!”

That’s just one of the benefits of integrating math fact fluency games and other math-driven games into your classroom.

A special live recording of Math Teacher Lounge at NCTM 2023—in which host Dan Meyer plays the above card game—explores how games can not only help build math fluency, but also help bring joy into the classroom.

As Dan notes during the live show, playing a game creates an energy shift in the room: “There’s like a moment of activation for a game versus a worksheet, where people are kind of murmuring and chattering,” he says. “I just want to, like, catch the vibe.”

Let’s find out more.

Math facts fluency, defined

When we think of fluency, we might think of speaking or reading a language. But fluency is also a goal in learning math. (And it’s the theme of this entire season of Math Teacher Lounge!)

As discussed in this post, the word “fluency” comes from the Latin fluentia, which means “flowing.” When applied to math facts for kids, it means ”skill in carrying out procedures flexibly, accurately, efficiently, and appropriately,” says Dan. As with someone fluent in a language (or a recipe), someone fluent in math is able to think and calculate mathematically without struggle or effort—that is, with fluidity.

Podcast co-host and elementary educator Bethany Lockhart Johnson provides this informal definition: “It’s that thing you don’t even think about anymore. ‘Cause it’s in there. You’re not still thinking about addition facts, because you’ve got it. And it fuels you. It’s the foundation that allows you to do all the other cool stuff.”

Math facts for kids through games

How do games help with all of this?

They can help make math more fun, for sure—but that’s just a start.

Podcast guest Jennifer Bay-Williams, Ph.D., a math education professor at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, knows that the learning and practicing of basic math facts can be rote and dull—but it doesn’t have to be. She likes to ask teachers: “How can you bring more joy to the learning of math, in a serious way?”

As this Edutopia article notes, “effective games…link content with low-stakes competition and can provide a more collaborative, engaging classroom experience—especially for students who may struggle to focus or find their niche in learning.”

There’s plenty of research to show that games can boost student participation, comfort with taking risks, interpersonal skills and classroom community, and positive attitudes toward learning. For kids with ADHD and dyslexia, they can also help improve focus and certain types of attention that support improved reading. All of this can help students get the practice and comfort with math they need to build the fluency they require.

But that doesn’t mean math class should be all fun and games. It’s important to integrate games into instruction thoughtfully and with purpose. As Bay-Williams says, she makes sure to ask teachers, “Really, why are we doing the game?”

Fluency games in Desmos Classroom

Desmos Classroom offers numerous math fluency games for all grade levels.

Additional resources

Don’t miss the finale of Math Teacher Lounge

Just like certain functions and number sequences, even the most successful podcasts reach a natural end. And that’s true of Math Teacher Lounge. After six seasons and more than 40 episodes, co-hosts Bethany Lockhart Johnson and Dan Meyer are heading off to work on other exciting projects.

So let’s take a look at the podcast’s farewell episode, as well as some highlights from earlier seasons.

Highlights from this math podcast

On the final episode of Math Teacher Lounge, our hosts walk through the past ten episodes on math fluency. They highlight key conversations on defining and assessing fluency, fluency development in a bilingual math classroom setting, and the potential pitfalls of relying too heavily on so-called fake fluency.

“I think every guest has answered a question that we’ve had about fluency and then also opened up new areas of investigation for us,” says Dan. “Whether that’s thinking about community more deeply through fluency or assessment or classroom practices, all these different folks offered us a glimpse into their expertise and then pointed at paths towards more learning.”

Spanning six seasons, the podcast has reached thousands of educators while exploring a wide range of topics including the joy of math, math anxiety, and (of course) math fluency. Guests have included Amplify’s Jason Zimba, Reach Capital’s Jennifer Carolan, and Baltimore County Public Schools’s John W. Staley, Ph.D.

Some of the most popular episodes included:

Investigating math anxiety in the classroom (S5E1) with Gerardo Ramirez, Ph.D., associate professor of educational psychology at Ball State University. Ramirez helped our hosts and listeners understand what math anxiety is and is not, what impact it has on learning, and what we can do about it.

Building math fluency through games (S6E7) with University of Louisville professor Jennifer Bay-Williams, Ph.D., who—in a special live recording at NCTM 2023—showed how games can bring both fluency and joy into the math classroom.

Cultivating a joy of learning with Sesame Workshop (S5E3) with Dr. Rosemarie Truglio, senior vice president of curriculum and content for Sesame Workshop. Dr. Truglio shared how to cultivate a growth mindset in young children and point them toward academic achievement and long-term success.

Professional development—and more—to look forward to

Bethany and Dan will continue working on a host of other exciting projects, including webinars and conference appearances. On March 12, Dan will also participate in the Amplify 2024 Math Symposium: a free, virtual, five-hour event that will help educators strengthen math instruction, bolster student agency, and build math proficiency for life.

The following key Math Symposium sessions (featuring your favorite Math Teacher Lounge guests and host Dan Meyer) will help you learn even more about those popular topics in math:

Dan Meyer

How to Invite Students into More Effective Math Learning | 3:15 p.m. EDT

Gerardo Ramirez Ball State University

How Student’s Personal Narratives Shape Math Learning | 12:15 p.m. EDT

Jennifer Bay-Williams University of Louisville

Bringing Math to Life: How Games Build Fluency and Engagement | 1:00 p.m. EDT

Akimi Gibson Sesame Workshop

Developing Young Children’s Identities and Competencies as Mathematicians | 4:00 p.m. EDT

Check out the full agenda and sign up today. All sessions will be recorded and attendees will receive a certificate of attendance.