As a Multiple Subjects Instructor, I understand how difficult it is for students to learn math. I have seen the dread in their eyes and felt the heaviness of their sighs. I see the switch, however, once they ‘get it,’ and it’s a rewarding experience. However, this doesn’t happen overnight. As teachers, we must craft creative and real world lessons, or our students’ motivations to learn will drop. Alycia Zimmerman is one teacher who understands this well. Zimmerman teaches a third grade Gifted and Talented class at P.S. 33 Chelsea Prep in Manhattan, where she has worked for eight years. She is well decorated with degrees from Princeton and Fordham, and was selected as one of Scholastic’s five bloggers of the 3,000 that applied. What’s the secret to her success? Brains, creativity, hard work and… LEGO bricks. Zimmerman wrote on her official [blog][1]: “”” As an adult, I’ve come to appreciate LEGO, both for its rectilinear aesthetic, and even more so, for its mathematical might. In the classroom, the tiny bricks are now my favorite possibility-packed math manipulative! “”” **See some of her work below:** [1]: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/top-teaching/2013/12/using-lego-build-math-concepts
