Susan Resnick helps teachers with differentiation and remediation by leveraging her background as a certified Math Interventionist and Special Education expert to provide practical, data-driven instructional strategies.Her approach to supporting diverse learners includes the following key methods:Specialized Professional Development
  • Tiered Intervention Institutes: Partnering with Greg Tang, Resnick shares effective intervention strategies for students who are performing below grade level or are at risk of slipping. These sessions focus on using number bonds and bar models to build connected number sense for struggling students.
  • Jumpstart Workshops: She leads training for K–6 teachers specifically focused on remediating critical gaps and planning hands-on lessons tailored to various student needs.
  • Push-in Lessons: Resnick works directly in classrooms to demonstrate best practices in differentiation and remediation for teachers, followed by planning days to assist with implementation.
Strategic Instructional Design
  • CPA Scaffolding: Resnick emphasizes the Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract (CPA) approach as a scaffold for students who find information hard to access. This allows students to start with basic physical components before moving to more challenging abstract concepts, reducing math anxiety.
  • Targeted Remediation Materials: As an author, she has written specific remediation and extension materials for the Primary Mathematics 2022 and Math in Focus 2020 editions to ensure the content remains accessible for diverse learners.
  • Strategic Fact Fluency: Through her award-winning resource, Fact Fluency: The Singapore Way, she provides teachers with a strategic approach to developing procedural fluency based on reasoning rather than rote memorization for struggling learners.
Differentiation Techniques
  • Using Data for Grouping: Resnick teaches administrators and instructors how to use assessment data to gauge student understanding and provide targeted, tiered support where needed.
  • Providing Multi-Level Entry Points: She encourages a lesson structure where challenge problems are posted for students who finish early, while others continue to work with manipulatives or models to justify their thinking.
  • Increasing Risk-Taking: She promotes the use of whiteboards (non-permanent surfaces) to encourage students to attempt problems without the fear of making a "permanent" mistake, which lowers anxiety and validates multiple valid explanations.
  • Classroom Interaction: Her workshops provide techniques to shift the focus from teacher-led instruction to student interaction, encouraging learners to think independently and explain their reasoning to one another.