Math Mini-Lessons

May the 4th be with all my Math Marvels!

Good luck on testing Math Marvels!

Big news! The Math Mini-Lessons State Test Breakdown Videos are being released on YouTube.

✅ 3rd–5th Grade videos are available now.
📅 6th Grade drops April 21 at 1 PM and 4 PM.
📅 7th and 8th Grade drop April 22:
• 7th Grade Part 1 — 7 AM
• 7th Grade Part 2 — 10 AM
• 8th Grade Part 1 — 1 PM
• 8th Grade Part 2 — 4 PM

And Regents Breakdowns are coming in May.

Please share this with teachers, families, and anyone supporting students during testing season. 💙

Thank you Bronx District 7 for such a wonderful math event! Kids from multiple elementary and middle schools came to share their math games and share their math skills in the Math Masters Competition!

One of the kids in a school said my videos were AI lol. Nope! Just hours of me recording math breakdown videos and rerecording when I make a mistake. The 2025 NYS test breaking coming soon for grades 3-8 on YouTube!

If this matters to you, don’t just read this, take a moment right now to donate or share.

Donate to No Child Should Fall Behind Because of Language, organized by Sarah Fuentes My name is Sarah, and I have dedicated my career to making math more acc… Sarah Fuentes needs your support for No Child Should Fall Behind Because of Language

Niya has been by my side throughout this entrepreneurial journey. She’s popped up on zooms, slept on my feet while I recorded YouTube videos and is usually on a pillow beneath or on my desk while I work. Take time for your pups who love us unconditionally

I'm reflecting on 2025 and starting year three as a full time Edu-Entrepreneur. I am in awe of what students and teachers have accomplished. I am grateful to the school leaders who chose to partner with me and I am deeply honored to be part of the work. JFK once said, "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." Yes, the work is hard, but it is also necessary, good, and for me a blessing.

So what do I do? I work with teachers and schools to help kids understand and use math more effectively. I created a math program that is used in schools in NY. I support school leaders with strategic planning and professional development that strengthens teacher content knowledge, pedagogy, and instructional decision-making—so high-impact teaching becomes sustainable. Doing this work has been challenging, complicated and at times filled with uncertainty. And it is work I am proud of. Here's 2025 by the numbers because good intentions cannot be confused with measurable results.

Over the past three years, nearly 900 math lessons were created. Those lessons are now in 16 schools helping 2,811 students Grades 3–8. In the Bronx and Washington Heights and about 700 high schoolers. In 2025, Math Marvelous LLC expanded into NYC Public Schools and Elementary schools. We continue to support underserved communities through the Math Mini-Lessons Program. The program provides instructional resources built for explicit, data-informed instruction. We also developed NYS mock exams for grades 3-8 to further inform instruction while preparing students for computer based tests.

Math Mini-Lessons is more than a product, it's a practice. Through strategic planning with leaders, professional trainings and teacher workshops, we saw shifts in teacher mindsets and practices to meet the needs of the learners in the classroom.

Across grades, our partner schools outpaced NYC gains. While NYC grew 3.5%, the districts I work with rose +4.41! Celebrate all wins! Math Mini-Lessons Elementary partners grew +13.7 and Middle School partners grew +8.2. This is impact.

Today, MML supports 25 schools—public and charter, elementary, middle, and high school—and we’re now partnering beyond NYC (even helping a school in Schenectady!) I am excited for the new year but the goal for 2026 remains the same, increase math achievement while building more confident students and teachers. I am grateful for every leader and teacher doing the work. I am indebted to everyone in my network that shares my name and connects me to other schools. And I stand with many other Edu-Entrepreneurs who are also making impact with their expertise.

Two years ago proofs were a struggle! It felt like pulling teeth to get students to respond. And two years later, students in the same classroom solved 3 proofs! They used knowledge from the course, our materials, and two amazing teachers to make this shift. I was so sad last June when kids in last year’s geo course didn’t hit their goal. They grew so much and based on data models, they were on track to surpass their goal on the regents from 2% to 30%. But this was a new test and the goal post was moved 5 points… and they missed the mark. 16%. I cried. The teachers cried. But then we evaluated, shifted targets and planned for the new year. So these moments, when I see kids doing something they couldn’t do 2 years ago, I’m proud. Their teacher wanted me to see what her kids can do because she was proud. And the jida, the were proud and I’m so happy they gave me this moment.

Is this the best use of your time?

That was the question underneath a coaching conversation I had with an overwhelmed teacher yesterday. She was talking about how long it takes to grade homework. Immediately I remembered the pile of papers that used to stack up when I was a classroom teacher. I asked how many students she had.
“Forty.” So we did the math together:

⏱️ 5 mins x 40 students = 200 mins or 3 hours 20 mins

I watched her face change. "That's so much time!" The realization had hit, the root cause of her long nights at work. "I can't take that much time to grade homework everyday!" Then I asked where she needs to put her time and she discussed lesson planning. She admitted she does need to look at exit tickets so how should she use or time? So the real question became: How do I get the information I need without spending 3+ hours a night grading homework?

We talked about the goal of homework: practice. If the goal is practice, then most of that practice should happen in the classroom, where students can get meaningful feedback in real time. She also said she was using homework to look for mastery. So I asked, “How is that different from the exit ticket?” She said she wanted to see what students remembered after the lesson.

So I made a simple suggestion: Keep the exit ticket at the end of the lesson. Add a quick entrance ticket at the start of the next day (2–3 questions on yesterday’s skill). Because she uses Formative, students can capture their answers digitally, and she can scan the data at a glance to make an instructional decision. Now homework doesn’t have to carry all the weight.

So what is a better use of her time? She said lesson planning. We talked about the difference between lesson planning (which is often recopying what is in the curriculum to fit the schools template) and lesson internalization using the Big 3 in a math lesson. What a lot of teachers don't account for is the amount of processing time it takes to do many teacher tasks. This is one of the reasons teaching feels unsustainable. It takes time and attention and teachers are limited in both.

When we internalize the lesson (or the homework or the exit ticket), we do the pre-work:
🔹 Understanding the cognitive demand of the task
🔹Anticipating what student application will look like
🔹Deciding what counts as evidence of mastery
It sounds like more work, but 30 minutes of true lesson internalization is far more impactful than 3+ hours of grading homework.

I don't expect this one conversation to change behavior. This kind of planning takes less clock time, but it requires more focus. And to be fair, sometimes we like the busy work. It feels familiar. It feels productive. Most of us love gaining knowledge, but we resist transformation. That’s where coaching comes in.

What are your thoughts? What tasks are taking the most time for the lowest return? What tasks have a better return on your time? And what might be stopping you from those higher-leverage tasks?

I stopped doing “interim assessments” with my partner schools. Here’s what we do instead. 👇🏽

When many teachers hear “interim assessment,” they don’t think “instructional goldmine.” They think more testing, less teaching, and “we’re just teaching to the test.” The problem isn’t the assessment. It’s the way we’re using it.

With my partner schools, we don’t give random IAs just to check a box. We run full mock exams at three points in the year that are:
🔹 Aligned to state exams and end-of-year expectations
🔹 Built to capture progress-to-goal, not just a one-time score
🔹 Paired with student-friendly growth targets for every child

Instead of “You got a 21/40 points. Do better next time.”
We say, “You earned 21 points today. Great! Over the next few months, we'll learn more math and get more practice. Your goal for the next mock is 28 points. Here’s exactly what needs more practice so let's focus there.”

🍎 For Teachers, Mock exams allows them to:
🔹 Focus their analysis on content they’ve actually taught
🔹 See where students are in the learning process, standard by standard
🔹 Expose students to the real level of rigor they’ll see on state exams

For school leaders 🏫, Admins get:
🔹 A clear view of progress across the year
🔹 More reliable, grade-level data than many adaptive tests
🔹 Insight to build structures that actually help kids: intervention, WIN blocks, smart grouping

What this looked like in one Bronx school
Last year I worked with 15 schools. One school went all in on Progress Monitoring. They gave mock exams in October, December, and March.

October (baseline)
🔹 Students had been in school ~6 weeks
🔹 Average Performance Level: 1.76 (no one expected to be at a 3 yet)

December
🔹 Students were familiar with ~45% of the content
🔹 Average Performance Level: 2.21
🔹 20% of students scored 3.0 or higher

March
🔹 Students were familiar with ~75% of the content
🔹 Average Performance Level: 2.54
🔹 45% of students scored 3.0 or higher

With this information, the school adjusted groups, tightened intervention/WIN time, and targeted specific standards. By May, on the real state exam:
🔹 74% of students scored Level 3 or higher
🔹 Average Performance Level: 3.23

They didn’t get those results by guessing. They got there by checking progress often, adjusting instruction, and giving students constant feedback and ownership. Kids set goals, saw their growth, and became more motivated as learners. This year, we’re doing it again. 🚀 They start their second cycle of Mocks next week.

Interim assessments are not the villain. Using them without a strategic progress-monitoring plan is. If you are a teacher, does your school use interim assessments? What kind of data are you using for progress monitoring? And more importantly, how are you using the data?

👉🏽 If you’re a principal, AP, or coach rethinking your assessment plan, DM me and I’ll share the blueprint we used with this Bronx school (and more this year).