Instruction in mathematics should support all students in acquiring the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind that they need in order to achieve the curriculum expectations and be able to enjoy and participate in mathematics learning for years to come.

Effective mathematics instruction begins with knowing the complex identities and profiles of the students, having high academic expectations for and of all students, providing supports when needed, and believing that all students can learn and do mathematics. Teachers incorporate Culturally Responsive and Relevant Pedagogy (CRRP) and provide authentic learning experiences to meet individual students’ learning strengths and needs. Effective mathematics instruction focuses on the development of conceptual understanding and procedural fluency, skill development, and communication, as well as problem-solving skills. It takes place in a safe and inclusive learning environment, where all students are valued, empowered, engaged, and able to take risks, learn from mistakes, and approach the learning of mathematics in a confident manner. Instruction that is student centred and asset based builds effectively on students’ strengths to develop mathematical habits of mind, such as curiosity and open-mindedness; a willingness to question, to challenge and be challenged; and an awareness of the value of listening intently, reading thoughtfully, and communicating with clarity.

Learning should be relevant: embedded in the lived realities of all students and inspired by authentic, real-life contexts as much as possible. This approach allows students to develop key mathematical concepts and skills, to appreciate the beauty and wide-ranging nature of mathematics, and to realize the potential of mathematics to raise awareness and effect social change that is innovative and sustainable. A focus on making learning relevant supports students in their use of mathematical reasoning to make connections throughout their lives.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Differentiated Instruction (DI)

Students in every mathematics classroom vary in their identities, lived experiences, personal interests, learning profiles, and readiness to learn new concepts and skills. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and differentiated instruction (DI) are robust and powerful approaches to designing assessment and instruction to engage all students in mathematical tasks that develop conceptual understanding and procedural fluency. Providing each student with opportunities to be challenged and to succeed requires teachers to attend to student differences and provide flexible and responsive approaches to instruction. UDL and DI can be used in combination to help teachers respond effectively to the strengths and needs of all students.

The aim of the UDL framework is to assist teachers in designing mathematics programs and environments that provide all students with equitable access to the mathematics curriculum. Within this framework, teachers engage students in multiple ways in order to support them in becoming purposeful and motivated in their mathematics learning. Teachers take into account students’ diverse learner profiles by designing tasks that offer individual choice, ensuring relevance and authenticity, providing graduated levels of challenge, and fostering collaboration in the mathematics classroom. Teachers also represent concepts and information in multiple ways to help students become resourceful and knowledgeable learners. For example, teachers use a variety of media to ensure that students are provided with alternatives for auditory and visual information; they clarify mathematics vocabulary and symbols; and they highlight patterns and big ideas to guide information processing. To support learners as they focus strategically on their learning goals, teachers create an environment in which learners can express themselves using a range of kinesthetic, visual, and auditory strengths. For example, teachers can improve access to tools or assistive devices; vary ways in which students can respond and demonstrate their understanding of concepts; and support students in goal-setting, planning, and time-management skills related to their mathematics learning.

Designing mathematics tasks through UDL allows the learning to be “low floor, high ceiling” – that is, all students are provided with the opportunity to find their own entry point to the learning. Teachers can then support students in working at their own pace and provide further support as needed, while continuing to move student learning forward. Tasks that are intentionally designed to be low floor, high ceiling provide opportunities for students to use varied approaches and to continue to be engaged in learning with varied levels of complexity and challenge. This is an inclusive approach that is grounded in a growth mindset: the belief that everyone can do well in mathematics.

While UDL provides teachers with broad principles for planning mathematics instruction and learning experiences for a diverse group of students, DI allows them to address specific skills and learning needs. DI is rooted in assessment and involves purposefully planning varied approaches to teaching the content of the curriculum; to the processes (e.g., tasks and activities) that support students as they make sense of what they are learning; to the ways in which students demonstrate their learning and the outcomes they are expected to produce; and to the learning environment. DI is student centred and involves a strategic blend of whole-class, small-group, and individual learning activities to suit students’ differing strengths, interests, and levels of readiness to learn. Attending to students’ varied readiness for learning mathematics is an important aspect of differentiated teaching. Learners who are ready for greater challenges need support in aiming higher, developing belief in excellence, and co-creating problem-based tasks to increase the complexity while still maintaining joy in learning. Students who are struggling to learn a concept need to be provided with the scaffolding and encouragement to reach high standards. Through an asset-based approach, teachers focus on these learners’ strengths, imbuing instructional approaches with a strong conviction that all students can learn. To make certain concepts more accessible, teachers can employ strategies such as offering students choice, and providing open-ended problems that are based on relevant real-life situations and supported with visual and hands-on learning. Research indicates that using differentiated instruction in mathematics classrooms can diminish inequities.

Universal Design for Learning and differentiated instruction are integral aspects of an inclusive mathematics program and the achievement of equity in mathematics education. More information on these approaches can be found in the ministry publication Learning for All: A Guide to Effective Assessment and Instruction for All Students, Kindergarten to Grade 12 (2013).

High-Impact Practices

Teachers understand the importance of knowing the identities and profiles of all students and of choosing the instructional approaches that will best support student learning. The approaches that teachers employ vary according to both the learning outcomes and the needs of the students, and teachers choose from and use a variety of accessible, equitable high-impact instructional practices.

The thoughtful use of these high-impact instructional practices – including knowing when to use them and how they might be combined to best support the achievement of specific math goals – is an essential component of effective math instruction. Researchers have found that the following practices consistently have a high impact on teaching and learning mathematics:

• Learning Goals, Success Criteria, and Descriptive Feedback. Learning goals and success criteria outline the intention for the lesson and how this intention will be achieved to ensure teachers and students have a clear and common understanding of what is being learned and what success looks like. The use of descriptive feedback involves providing students with the precise information they need in order to reach the intended learning goal.
• Direct Instruction. This is a concise, intentional form of instruction that begins with a clear learning goal. It is not a lecture or a show-and-tell. Instead, direct instruction is a carefully planned and focused approach that uses questioning, activities, or brief demonstrations to guide learning, check for understanding, and make concepts clear. Direct instruction prioritizes feedback and formative assessment throughout the learning process and concludes with a clear summary of the learning that can be provided in written form, orally, and/or visually.
• Problem-Solving Tasks and Experiences. It is an effective practice to use a problem, intentionally selected or created by the teacher or students, to introduce, clarify, or apply a concept or skill. This practice provides opportunities for students to demonstrate their agency by representing, connecting, and justifying their thinking. Students communicate and reason with one another and generate ideas that the teacher connects in order to highlight important concepts, refine existing understanding, eliminate unsuitable strategies, and advance learning.
• Teaching about Problem Solving. Teaching students about the process of problem solving makes explicit the critical thinking that problem solving requires. It involves teaching students to identify what is known and unknown, to draw on similarities and differences between various types of problems, and to use representations to model the problem-solving situation.
• Tools and Representations. The use of a variety of appropriate tools and representations supports a conceptual understanding of mathematics. Carefully chosen and used effectively, representations and tools such as manipulatives make math concepts accessible to a wide range of learners. At the same time, student interactions with representations and tools also give teachers insight into students’ thinking and learning.
• Math Conversations. Effective mathematical conversations create opportunities for all students to express their mathematical thoughts and to engage meaningfully in mathematical talk by listening to and responding to the ideas of others. These conversations involve reasoning, proving, building on the thinking of others, defending and justifying their own thinking, and adjusting their perspectives as they build their mathematical understanding, confidence, and awareness of the mathematical thoughts of others.
• Small-Group Instruction. A powerful strategy for moving student learning forward, small-group instruction involves targeted, timely, and scaffolded mathematics instruction that meets the learning needs of specific students at appropriate times. By working with small and flexible groups, whether they are homogenous or heterogenous, teachers can personalize learning in order to close gaps that exist or extend thinking. Small-group instruction also provides opportunities for teachers to connect with and learn more about student identities, experiences, and communities, which the teachers can build on as a basis for their mathematics instruction.
• Deliberate Practice. Practice is best when it is purposeful and spaced over time. It must always follow understanding and should be continual and consistent. Teachers provide students with timely descriptive feedback to ensure that students know they are practising correctly and sufficiently. Students also need to practise metacognition, or reflecting on their learning, in order to become self-directed learners.
• Flexible Groupings. The intentional combination of large-group, small-group, partnered, and independent working arrangements, in response to student and class learning needs, can foster a rich mathematical learning environment. Creating flexible groupings in a mathematics class enables students to work independently of the teacher but with the support of their peers, and it strengthens collaboration and communication skills. Regardless of the size of the group, it is of utmost importance that individual students have ownership of their learning.

While a lesson may prominently feature one of these high-impact practices, other practices will inevitably also be involved. The practices are rarely used in isolation, nor is there any single “best” instructional practice. Teachers strategically choose the right practice, for the right time, in order to create an optimal learning experience for all students. They use their socio-cultural awareness of themselves and their students, a deep understanding of the curriculum and of the mathematics that underpins the expectations, and a variety of assessment strategies to determine which high-impact instructional practice, or combination of practices, best supports the students. These decisions are made continually throughout a lesson. The appropriate use of high-impact practices plays an important role in supporting student learning.

More information can be found in the resource section on high-impact practices in mathematics. 

When teachers effectively implement Universal Design for Learning, differentiated instruction, and high-impact practices in mathematics programs, they create opportunities for students to develop mathematics knowledge and skills, to apply mathematical processes, and to develop transferable skills that can be applied in other curricular areas.

The mathematics curriculum was developed with the understanding that the strategic use of technology is part of a balanced mathematics program. Technology can extend and enrich teachers’ instructional strategies to support all students’ learning in mathematics. Technology, when used in a thoughtful manner, can support and foster the development of mathematical reasoning, problem solving, and communication. For some students, technology is essential and required to access curriculum.

When using technology to support the teaching and learning of mathematics, teachers consider the issues of student safety, privacy, ethical responsibility, equity and inclusion, and well-being.

The strategic use of technology to support the achievement of the curriculum expectations requires a strong understanding of:

• the mathematical concepts being addressed;
• high-impact teaching practices that can be used, as appropriate, to achieve the learning goals;
• the capacity of the chosen technology to augment the learning, and how to use this technology effectively.

Technology (e.g., digital tools, computation devices, calculators, data-collection programs and coding environments) can be used specifically to support students’ thinking in mathematics, to develop conceptual understanding (e.g., visualization using virtual graphing or geometry tools), and to facilitate access to information and allow better communication and collaboration (e.g., collaborative documents and web-based content that enable students to connect with experts and other students; language translation applications).

Coding has been introduced into the Grade 9 mathematics course as a continuum from the elementary mathematics curriculum. The elementary mathematics curriculum outlines a developmental progression for students to develop foundational coding skills. In Grade 9, students transition to using coding as a tool to interact with the mathematics they are learning. They use the skills developed in elementary to create and alter code in a multitude of coding environments including text-based programming languages, spreadsheets, computer algebra systems (CAS), and virtual graphing and geometry tools.

Technology can support English language learners in accessing mathematics terminolog