When my oldest son was entering Kindergarten, he had an appointment with his teacher before the school year started so that she could assess where he was academically.  I remember sitting in the back of the room and listening to the two of them chat about his interests, his summer activities and his thoughts about being in Kindergarten.

She then asked him if he could count to 100 for her.  Without skipping a beat, my son asked if she wanted him to count by ones, twos, fives or tens.

I remember her shooting me a glance as she told him she was going to move on to a different topic.

My son had a little bit of an advantage.  His mom is someone who happens to be passionate about education – specifically elementary math education.  But if you’d asked him back then if he studied math at home, he would have most likely answered ‘no’.

That’s because most of the math he learned was embedded in whatever we happened to be doing at the time.  You’ve heard about embedded assessment – assessing students while they’re engaged in the lesson. It’s sort of like that only with instruction.  I like to think of it as the stealthy way to teach.

My son learned to count by  twos, fives, and tens because we happened to be counting large quantities of legos or goldfish crackers or Halloween candy and skip counting was more efficient.  So that’s what we did.  And over time, he learned.

Now we can’t possibly teach all of our lessons in the classroom this way.  It would take too long waiting for the appropriate moments.  Besides, there’s a lot of value in direct teaching.  But that said, we can still sneak in some stealthy teaching along the way.  A super easy way to do this non-direct teaching is to share your thinking out loud when solving problems that come up throughout the day.

I just got a notice in my teacher’s box that the assembly begins at 11:00 today.  Let’s see, we should probably be in the multi-use room at 10:50 and it takes about 7 minutes for us to get organized and walk there.  So that’s 10:50 minus 5 minutes which is 10:45 minus another 2 minutes means we need to begin getting ready at 10:43.

And don’t assume that you have to stick with problems that are in your current curriculum.  Beginning Kindergartners aren’t supposed to be able to skip count by twos, fives and tens but my son learned by hearing me do it over and over.

By the way, did you notice how the teacher above shared a notice that was in her teacher’s box?  Kids are so curious about how the adult world works, and sharing things like teacher’s boxes and special notes piques their interest.  They’re nosy that way.  So let’s use it to our advantage.

Here’s a short video of another stealthy way to reinforce learning if your students are studying their multiplication (and division!) facts.

How to Use Transition Times to Reinforce Multiplication and Division Facts – Grades 2-4

There are times when direct teaching is the way to go.  And there are other times when indirect teaching works well.  Together, they make for a very powerful learning environment!