The second edition of Basic Fractions Using LEGO® Bricks has just been published! This edition has even more ways to teach students about fractions than before.
The first edition of Teaching Fractions Using LEGO® Bricks was the very first book written in the 22-book Brick Math series. Author Dr. Shirley Disseler went back to this best-selling book and thought it was time for an update. The second edition has lots of new illustrations of the brick models as well as several new chapters with content that was not included in the original book. Here's what's new in this second edition:

• The "fraction train" - Dr. Disseler's own copyrighted method for teaching how to find the least common denominator
• Comparing and ordering fractions with unlike denominators
• How to add and subtract mixed numbers

The Basic Fractions book also includes all the topics from the first edition to help students learn:

• How to recognize fractions
• The vocabulary of fractions
• How to define a whole and represent parts of different-sized wholes
• Equivalent fractions
• How to add and subtract fractions with like and unlike denominators
• How to represent and understand mixed numbers 

Basic Fractions Using LEGO® Bricks is available in both Teacher and Student Editions. The Teacher Edition is the lesson guide for the teacher to follow, with step-by-step lessons and full-color illustrations of the brick models students will build as you teach. The Student Edition is the workbook that each student uses to draw their completed models, answer questions about the lessons, and explain their thought process in writing, and each chapter has an assessment so you can easily tell if your students are mastering the concepts.
Right now, until December 15, the Brick Math FREE Lesson of the Month is from the Basic Fractions book, and it shows how to teach students to compare and order fractions, using the fantastic "fraction train" method. To download the free lesson, click here.

What do you do when you want to try an innovative curriculum like Brick Math, but your school doesn’t have the budget for it? Look for a grant!
 
A number of orders for Brick Math curriculum and materials have been funded from grants. Many foundations that fund grants for educational programs, materials, and professional development target STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math).
 
Here’s a list of some grants you can apply for if you’re interested in funding for Brick Math:

• Donors Choose https://www.donorschoose.org/teachers
• NCTM https://www.nctm.org/Grants/
• NCTM Emerging Teacher-Leaders in Elementary School Mathematics Grants https://www.nctm.org/Grants-and-Awards/grants/Emerging-Teacher-Leaders-in-Elementary-School-Mathematics-Grants/
• NCTM Improving Students' Understanding of Geometry Grants 
  www.nctm.org/uploadedFiles/Grants_and_Awards/grants/Improving%20Students'%20Understanding%20of%20Geometry%20Grants%20(Pre-K-8).pdf
• NEA Foundation for Learning Grant https://www.neafoundation.org/for-educators/
• NEA California Casualty $2,500 Giveaway https://secure.mycalcas.com/academicaward
• Toshiba Teacher Grant TAF http://www.toshiba.com/taf/k5.jsp

 
And each state has its own grants; for example, this one in North Carolina:
Bright Ideas Educational Grants http://www.ncbrightideas.com/Home.aspx
Find grants in your state at this site: https://grantsalert.com/grants/
 
We’ll be happy to help you figure out what you need for your classroom or school when you’re writing your grant for Brick Math. Just contact neil@brickmathseries.com or call 802-751-8802.

Hi, Texas and California! Welcome to Brick Math!

The Brick Math phenomenon is spreading across the country. Brick Math is the exciting new program for teaching a complete K-6 curriculum using LEGO® bricks. School districts around the country are setting Brick Math up as an approved vendor.

Brick Math has recently become an approved vendor for the North East Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas, which also extends to the Judson, Northside, and San Antonio Independent School Districts. In the Houston area, Brick Math was approved as a vendor for the Aldine Independent School District, which also extends to more than 40 school districts in the Central Texas Purchasing Alliance (CTPA). Brick Math was also approved as a vendor for the Klein Independent School District in Klein, Texas, which is in the Houston area as well.

In California, we’ve recently become an approved vendor of the Compass Charter Schools, which provide online and home study school services for kids in that state, often serving child actors, athletes, and students from military families.

When a school or district wants to buy Brick Math, sometimes we need to become an approved vendor. This happens in a couple of ways:

• Through a formal RFP process when a district asks vendors to submit their product for approval. Usually the district’s purchasing department handles the proposals, and the district Board of Education makes the final approvals. After that, any school in the district or whole purchasing unit can purchase Brick Math.
• By the school or district asking us directly for our tax ID number so they can put us on their approved list. Usually this happens when the school has already decided to buy Brick Math, and this is a very simple process that takes about a minute.

If your school wants to purchase Brick Math but we aren’t part of your school or district’s approved vendor network yet, it’s easy for us to become part of that list. Just contact neil@brickmathseries.com and he’ll make that happen so your school can get started with Brick Math!

Brick Math is an approved vendor in a number of school districts in North Carolina, New Jersey, and South Carolina. We might already be approved in your district, too. If you're not sure, contact neil@brickmathseries.com to find out. We look forward to being approved as a vendor by many more school districts to help more students improve their math skills through Brick Math. 

There's been an increase lately in the number of orders for Brick Math materials that are funded by grants. It seems that teachers and schools are finding grant money a wonderful source of funds to buy the Brick Math program.
Recently, a grant for STEM materials from the North Carolina Chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) was awarded to the Ethan Shive Elementary School in Rockwell, NC, and it was used to purchase Brick Math books and brick sets for the start of the school year! 
Other schools have been the recipient of grants from many generous groups, including Donors Choose, local PTAs, and educational foundations. These funds have given teachers and schools the opportunity to include Brick Math in their curriculum for students who need a better way to learn math concepts.
We thank these organizations who support the hard work of teachers who are helping students increase their mathematical confidence!

Starting today, you can receive a FREE Brick Math lesson every month! You'll be able to download a PDF that includes the teacher instructions for a lesson, plus the student pages that go along with the lesson. It's a great way to try out the Brick Math program with your students.
Once you've signed up, you'llreceive a new Brick Math lesson every month. 
This month, the lesson is from Basic Measurement Using LEGO® Bricks, and it's about "Coin Values." You'll use bricks to model the values of coins: pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. It's a simple, yet very effective, way to help students comprehend the value of each coin and how the coins relate to each other. Typically, students learn about coin values in Kindergarten or first grade.
​Click here to sign up now for the monthly free lesson plans + student pages to build your Brick Math library!

New research shows that Brick Math: Teaching Math Using LEGO® Bricks is very successful as an elementary math teaching tool. Two important findings emerged from this study: 
     1. Students make dramatic improvements in test scores
     2. Students are highly engaged with the Brick Math method of learning
The research confirms that when students are engaged with the material, they are more likely to learn it fully. And students are fully engaged with the hands-on Brick Math program.
 
Here's what the study showed:
1,400 K-5 students in North Carolina and New Jersey were taught using Brick Math in these six content areas:

• Counting and Cardinality                       
• Addition                                   
• Subtraction                                   
• Multiplication                                   
• Division                                   
• Basic Fractions

Students were given a 10-question assessment before implementing the Brick Math program, and then given a 10-question assessment following instruction. 77% of the students improved from 4 to 6 points on the 10-point scale. In addition, 91% of the students were highly engaged with the Brick Math curriculum being taught (44 or higher on a scale of 0-50). The study also showed that the more engaged students were, the higher were their gains from pre-test to post-test.
 
The results: Brick Math engages students fully, and it achieves powerful learning growth!

When a child plays a game where they give some things and keep others, they are starting to learn subtraction. But when they begin to learn subtraction in school, it can be tricky. Building models of subtraction with LEGO® bricks is a great way to show students how subtraction works. The Brick Math: Teaching Math Using LEGO® Bricks program utilizes the bricks as a manipulative for demonstrating the action of the math. Rather than taking away items that are subtracted, the program shows subtraction by stacking bricks, so that what’s left can be easily counted and understood. And as you can imagine, students have fun learning with LEGO® bricks!
 
In Subtraction Using LEGO® Bricks, the hands-on activities using LEGO® bricks help students learn the concepts of:
• start unknown subtraction
• change unknown subtraction
• result unknown subtraction
• comparisons
• decomposing numbers and place value

Brick Math helps students learn subtraction through its integrated program. The teacher leads students through step-by-step lesson plans. Using the bricks, students create models of the math as they learn. They then draw the models they’ve created and explain how the models work. These different ways of interacting with the bricks lead to a deep understanding of subtraction.

Modeling subtraction with LEGO® bricks in the Brick Math curriculum gives students the chance to be creative while learning math. They quickly discover multiple solutions for problems rather than looking for only one right answer.

Using LEGO® bricks to learn math with Brick Math is fun—for the teacher AND the students!
 
Click here to see videos of lessons from Subtraction Using LEGO® Bricks—Teacher Edition.
 
Click here for a preview of the lesson, “What Does It Mean to Subtract?” from Subtraction Using LEGO® Bricks—Teacher Edition.
​

Learning addition is far more than memorizing “one plus one makes two”! After young students know about counting and cardinal numbers, they need to understand the idea of sets and putting objects together. Building models of addition with LEGO® bricks is the perfect way to show students the action of addition. The bumps on the bricks, which are called “studs,” are a great tool for using one-to-one correspondence to teach addition. Plus (pun intended!), students have fun learning with LEGO® bricks!
 
In Addition Using LEGO® Bricks, the hands-on activities using LEGO® bricks help students learn the concepts of:
• joining sets
• solving part-part-whole problems
• comparisons
• decomposing numbers
• place value 

Brick Math helps students learn addition through its integrated program. The teacher leads students through step-by-step lesson plans. Using the bricks, students create models of the math as they learn. They then draw the models they’ve created and explain how the models work. These different ways of interacting with the bricks lead to a deep understanding of addition.

There are many different ways to model with LEGO® bricks in the Brick Math curriculum, and students have the opportunity to create multiple solutions for problems instead of looking for only one right answer.

Learning math using LEGO® bricks with Brick Math is fun—for the teacher AND the students!
 
Click here for a preview of the lesson, “What Does It Mean to Add?” from Addition Using LEGO® Bricks—Teacher Edition​.

The first step in learning math is learning to count. But there’s more to counting than just reciting a string of numbers in order—lots more. You want your students to develop a solid base of fluency with numbers. They do this by learn to count on, count back, skip-count, and use one-to-one correspondence. Modeling math with manipulatives gets early learners off on the right foot. Brick Math uses LEGO® bricks as the manipulative to help your students visualize the math, so it’s fun to learn!
 
In Counting and Cardinality Using LEGO® Bricks, the hands-on activities using LEGO® bricks help students learn:
• pattern recognition
• skip-counting
• jump numbers
• concepts of more than and less than
• one-to-one correspondence

Brick Math helps students learn counting and cardinality through its integrated program. The teacher leads students through step-by-step lesson plans. Using the bricks, students create models of the math as they learn. They then draw the models they’ve created and explain how the models work. These different ways of interacting with the bricks lead to a deep understanding of counting and cardinality.

Using LEGO® bricks to model math adds creativity into the process of learning math. Brick Math gives students the opportunity to create multiple solutions for problems instead of looking for only one right answer. Click here to see several videos of lessons from Counting and Cardinality Using LEGO® Bricks—Teacher Edition​.

Using LEGO® bricks to learn math with Brick Math is fun—for the teacher AND the students!
 
Click here for a preview of a lesson from Counting and Cardinality Using LEGO® Bricks—Teacher Edition​.

You’re an elementary school teacher who loves LEGO® bricks, and you’ve always wanted to use them to teach math. Finally, there’s a program to do it — Brick Math: Teaching Math Using LEGO® Bricks!
 
Test out Brick Math with one Teacher Edition of any subject and one Student Edition of that subject. Use your own LEGO® bricks for now; the specific bricks you’ll need are listed at the beginning of each chapter and the whole list of bricks needed for the program is in each book's Appendix. Work through a few chapters with a student one-on-one. You’ll quickly see how easy Brick Math is to teach, and how much students enjoy learning this way. The two books will set you back less than $25, and the small investment will earn great rewards for you and your students.
 
Another great way to start with Brick Math is to choose one subject and introduce it in a small group setting. For example, maybe you have some fourth graders who haven’t really ever understood fractions. Here’s all you need to start working with four students at a time: one Teacher Edition of Basic Fractions Using LEGO® Bricks, two brick sets (each set can be shared between two students), and (optional) four companion Student Editions of Basic Fractions Using LEGO® Bricks. This will cost less than $175. If your PTA offers small grants to teachers, this is the perfect use for that money!
 
Here’s how you teach with any subject in Brick Math:

• You follow the lessons in the Teacher Edition. Choose any chapter in the book to start. Begin by taking students through the Part 1: Show Them How section of the chapter. Build the brick models, show them to your students, and ask students questions as directed. Be sure to use the math vocabulary for each lesson.
• Have your students build the same models themselves so they are manipulating the bricks as you are guiding them.
• Then have students draw their models and answer the questions in their companion Student Editions.
• ​Once students have mastered the modeling processes from Part 1, move to the Part 2: Show What You Know section of the chapter. This time, you’ll ask students to complete each of the problems, first by modeling with bricks and then by drawing their models in the companion Student Editions.
• ​Check that students are building their models correctly and that they understand the concepts behind the models before you move on to the next lesson. And to help you make sure your students are on target, each chapter of the Student Editions include an Assessment and a chart to track each student's progress.

 
And here are some tips that author Dr. Shirley Disseler says will help when you’re first introducing Brick Math to your students:

• Before starting, have a conversation with the students about using bricks as a learning tool rather than a toy.
• Teach students the language of bricks (baseplate, stud, 1x1, 1x2, etc.).
• Assign brick sets to specific students by number and always give the same students the same sets. This helps keep students from taking home or misplacing bricks. If they know they will always have to work with the same brick set, they are more likely to be careful with their set.
• Do not teach with bricks—or any manipulative—every day. Students also need to think through the math processes without a physical model.
• To keep bricks clean, put them in a hosiery bag and wash on the top rack of the dishwasher. Let them air dry.
• To keep bricks from sliding off desks, use foam shelf liner cut into rectangular sections or large meat trays (you can often get these free from a local supermarket).
• Active learning breeds active learners! Students will be motivated and engaged in math when they are using bricks. It will not be quiet in your classroom, but it will be full of chatter about math!

​Check the Brick Math website for videos that will help you get started teaching with Brick Math. The site, www.brickmath.com, has lots of info about how to teach math using LEGO® bricks!