Math Makes Sense

By Katie Basham

I wish I had known that when I was a young, impressionable student. Maybe some kids knew it—maybe they even believed it—but I certainly didn’t. I was the kid counting on my fingers, skip-counting under my breath, and hoping no one would notice. I thought of these methods as “less-than” strategies and felt a pit in my stomach at the thought of others noticing me using them.

Everyone Can Be Good at Math

Also true. And I wish my teachers had known that, too. Maybe then I would’ve felt proud of my own strategies, instead of ashamed. Because here’s the truth: success doesn’t belong to a select few. It’s not limited. There’s enough of it for every single student to feel it, own it, and believe in it.

These two beliefs—math makes sense and everyone can be good at math—are the foundation of Seeing the Math You Teach. Success shouldn’t be reserved for an elite few. All students can succeed when they understand that math is really about visualizing and explaining abstract thinking. Because when students can see the math, they can understand it….and, when they understand it? It makes sense.

What a privilege we have as educators.
It’s no longer our job to bestow knowledge from on high. Our mission is to create learning environments where students use concrete materials, build visual representations, and gradually progress to symbolic understanding. This book is designed to empower you—to help you see and understand the math you teach, so you can help your students do the same.

Take rounding, for example.
I recently asked a respected educator how he would explain it. Here’s how the conversation went:

Me: “What does it mean to round a number?”
Him: “Five or more, raise the score. Four or less, let it rest.”
Me: “But what does that mean?”
Him: “It means if the number ends in a five…”

As you can see, we weren’t quite getting to the heart of it.

“Rounding” isn’t really something you do, like an action—it’s more about understanding where a number falls in relation to benchmarks or friendly numbers. In other words, rounding is determining which number a given value is closest to.

• What number is nineteen closer to?
• What number is 18.34 closer to?
• THAT’S what rounding is.

Rimbey, K., Basham, K, Berda, C. (2025). Seeing the Math You Teach. Corwin: Thousand Oaks, CA.

The student who can show rounding on a number line isn’t just repeating a rhyme—they’re seeing the math. They’re understanding the concept. And that, at its core, is what this book is about.

We want you—and your students—to experience success.

Because: Math Makes Sense & Everyone Can Be Good at Math!

Interested in Workshops by Kim Rimbey?

Kim offers workshops on a variety of topics, including Building Thinking Classrooms, Ten-Frame Mathematics, Mastering Math Manipulatives, Small-Group Math Instruction, and See the Math You Teach: A New Vision for Math Teaching and Learning. View Kim’s PD Catalog to learn more.