The Secret to Math Success for the 2025-2026 School Year

Welcome to the kickoff of our August Saturday Math! 🎉 In this episode, Jonily Zupancic and Cheri Dotterer set the stage for the 2025–2026 school year with a focus on depth in lesson planning.

You’ll learn:

• Why shallow, “grab-and-go” teaching resources aren’t enough.
• The grade levels Jonily will be partnering with this year (2, 3, 4, 8, Algebra I & II).
• How our certified coaches are modeling success in Grade 1 and Grade 6.
• Why teacher quality and intentional planning matter more than any textbook.

🎯 Whether you’re a classroom teacher, intervention specialist, or administrator, this conversation will challenge how you think about planning and inspire you to bring depth into your math lessons.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 – Welcome + Introduction to Saturday Math
01:00 – Kickoff for the 2025–2026 school year
03:30 – Grade levels Jonily is partnering with this year
05:00 – Spotlight on certified coaches in Grades 1 and 6
06:30 – Introducing the year’s theme: Depth over shallow teaching
08:00 – Why textbooks and grab-and-go lessons fall short
09:30 – Behind-the-scenes: how lesson planning really happens
11:00 – Preview of the four categories for building depth
19:00 – Multiplication example: exposing symbols early
20:00 – Outro + CTA to join the Masterclass

🎯 Ready to Change Math Outcomes in 10 Days?

👉 Join our FREE Masterclass for school leaders, teachers, and OTs:
 https://disabilitylabs.com/live-webinar/freemasterclass/register

🎧 Prefer to Listen On the Go?

Spotify
Apple Podcasts
Amazon/Audible

🔗 Stay Connected

🌐 Website: https://disabilitylabs.com/courses/mastery-math-bundle
📧 Disability Labs Community: https://disabilitylabs.com/community/3d-learning-lounge-1

🎙️ Credits:
Host: Cheri Dotterer
Co-Host: Jonily Zupancic
Production: Disability Labs Podcast Network

🧠 Resources Mentioned:

Mastery Math Method Level One (Lifetime Access): https://disabilitylabs.com/courses/mastery-math-bundle
Mastery Math Method Level Two (Annual Subscription): https://disabilitylabs.com/courses/mastery-math-method-group-coaching

⚠️ Disclaimer: The content shared in this video is for educational purposes only and does not replace your district’s policies or individualized education plans. Always consult with your instructional team before implementing new strategies.

🏷️ Hashtags

#Tier1Interventions #MathIntervention #MasteryMathMethod #TeachingStrategies #SpecialEducation #MTSS #NeurodiverseLearning #Jonily #Cheri

Creators and Guests

Host

Cheri Dotterer

Hacking barriers to writing success, dysgraphia No ✏️ Required. 30-sec@time Speaker | Podcast Host | Author | Consultanthttps://t.co/eM1CXSUIoZ

Host

Jonily Zupancic

Middle School Math Instructional Coach

What is Tier 1 Interventions?

Math intervention, writing intervention, neurobiology, and cognitive-based learning - Jonily Zupancic and Cheri Dotterer are sharing how to incorporate them into your classroom. Jonily is a secondary math teacher and instructional coach for math K-12. Cheri is an occupational therapist specializing in neurology-based treatment across the lifespan and a Strategy-based Interventionist. Jonily secretly calls Cheri her Lesson Plan Whisperer because Cheri is always in her head, reminding her of the foundations of development before academics begin.

They met in 2018 and have been talking ever since. Together, they have discovered the Miracle Math Classroom. This classroom embeds all math standards from Kindergarten to twelfth grade, plus neuro-based interventions that improve proficiency and boost student engagement. Both gifted and learning support students thrive using the interventions they share, plus all students in between. Using cognitive enhancing techniques strategically placed in the lesson plan, students learn more and enjoy school more, and fewer students get removed from critical instruction for Tier Three Interventions.

Jonily has discovered how to teach all Kindergarten through algebra math standards using twelve, that’s right, twelve Reference Tasks. They include the Pizza Problem, 120-Chart, Paper Folding, Making Rectangles, Quick Dots, Locker Problem, Jesse and Kay, Geoboard, Candy Problem, Paint Problem, Staircase, and the Function Machine.

Cheri uses Body-Brain Anchors to ignite the flame inside everyone’s brain for learning. Whether a person is five or 90, her strategy-based interventions will ignite that flame. These Brain-Body Anchors include the Handstand Flip, Interlaced Bilateral Integration, and the Body Sentence Alphabet.

Together, they connect the puzzle behind math instruction and instructional delivery alongside these cognitive-enhancing activities to maximize math education for all students.

Join us live on the third Saturday of the month, sans July, for the math behind the Reference Task. Every live event is approximately 2.5 contact hours. The first 30-ish minutes become this podcast. To hear the entire training, join our membership program.

Please note: we will not record on holiday weekends. Join our mailing list for updates on dates.

To join us live, register at Tier1interventions.com. The 2.5-hour sessions include the PowerPoint slides, additional audio files of Jonily teaching the Reference Task, resources from Cheri, and much more. A subscription to these 2.5-hour Workshops is $97/month or $947/year.

Membership includes:
*Approximately 27.5 hours of direct training per year
*Audio files of Jonily's Hear Me Teach segments - complete
*PowerPoint Slides to grab and use in your Magic Math Classroom
*Resources from Jonily and Cheri for you and your students
*A copy of Math DYSconnected when released.

Or, you can listen to the first segment on your favorite podcast app for free; no membership is required. No matter how you listen, you will come away with golden nuggets that will transform your classroom.

Reach out to Jonily: [e-mail]
Reach out to Cheri: [e-mail]

Tier1Interventions.com

Jonily: [00:00:00] Hey everybody, it's Cheri Dotterer here at Tier One Interventions podcast.

I'm here today with Jonily Zupancic and we are in class today with a live group of ladies and gentlemen. I'm gonna let Jonily talk and if there's any intervention that I wanna add to the puzzle, we will do but for now, I'm signing it all over to Jonily and let us learn a little bit about mathematics.

Girl. Y'all, this is Jay-Z. I'm Jonily Zupancic, I'm your math specialist, your main Mathineer.

if you are a general classroom teacher, a special ed teacher, a parent, a school board member, a superintendent, a curriculum director, a principal, every stakeholder should be involved in the qualities of a strong tier one general classroom environment and the experiences that students are going to have.

[00:01:00] Hello everyone. Welcome to the kickoff of this school year, . This school year is starting. I'm not sure if you're aware, maybe I'm here to break the news to you, but the 20 25, 20 26 school year is here. But no worries, because I have been planning your math lessons. All summer long and today I'm going to give you the behind the scenes of what has already been planned and through each of our Saturday maths this year, I will talk about how those plans are being implemented.

So good morning and welcome to Saturday Math. This is our free 90 minute event once a month, and [00:02:00] we are just starting this school year's sessions. I literally have been working for two solid months on the lesson plans that we are gonna bring to you this school year.

So I'm gonna take us back to what we need to think about to kick off the school year. What are the apps, the absolute essentials? And as I do that, I wanna let you know that I am implementing all of these plans this year. Every year I partner with certain grade levels and teachers and certain schools.

So this year so each year I have the opportunity to actually implement plans in certain grade levels. So this is my, this year partner. Grade levels. Nobody knows this yet. This is all new. And if you're new, everything's [00:03:00] new today. So welcome. If this is your first time with us, you haven't missed anything except the last seven years of growing mathematically.

I'm just kidding. Hey, everybody starts today, day one. This is day one. So I am here to reveal to you which grade levels I am partnering with this year that I will actually be teaching the lessons that I'm gonna share with you. And they are, I still need my notes because it's not all in there yet.

So this year I am heavily focused on collaborating and partnering and implementing our math model in grade two, grade three, grade four. So that's easier to remember. 2, 3, 4. Grade eight, algebra one, and ding. Algebra two. Now, for some of you, you're going to, you're gonna think algebra two is [00:04:00] way beyond.

However, what I teach on was all developed even for K one, two. Everything that I teach on was developed as essential outcomes necessary for success in algebra two. So what's really exciting this year is I will be implementing. At the algebra two level as well. So those are my personal grade levels this year, 2, 3, 4, 8, algebra one and algebra two.

Our certified coaches are covering grade one and grade six. So in grade one and grade six, those have been implemented for years. They will add some tweaks this year that they will share and tell us about and show us and help us explore with them. But grade one and six are covered by our certified coaches.

Krista, give us a wave. [00:05:00] Krista is a longtime full implementer at grade of this model, at the grade six level, and her partner in crime, which is Natalie, couldn't be here today, is also sixth grade implementer. Fun story. Natalie, also certified coach with us was Krista's student teacher. A good what, how many years ago now?

Six. Oh my gosh. She's growing up. She's growing. She's not here today, but I will tell her about the recording. She's growing up. But Natalie was Krista's student teacher and now they teach, not at the same school, but in the same district and they both teach sixth grade and they have been heavy implementers of the model, which I'm gonna share the pieces of the model today and the getting started guide for your kickoff to this school year.

But Krista and Natalie heavy implement in grade six, so you will see samples of that this year. And then Amy [00:06:00] Garrison our littles teacher, she's our littles teacher. She's been a grade one teacher, I think her entire career. I don't know, I always forget we should ask her, but I think she's taught grade one her entire career and I think she is probably on year 26 or 27 at this point.

So Amy Garrison is one of our certified coaches at grade. She also taught kindergarten. Sorry to interrupt you. Perfect. And so Amy is our heavy grade one implementer, and she will be bringing all of her secrets to you this year as well. So that is, that's like the way back background.

And the theme of the model is what I have here, and that is depth. So Saturday maths are a little different than like a textbook guide, or when you go to teachers, pay teachers and you grab these lessons and every that [00:07:00] just keeps you in survival mode. Like they're ready, made, ready to go. Different than if you like Google a task or an activity.

So typically the textbook resources that we have, teachers pay teachers, anything we find on the internet is keeps us going, keep not saying those things are bad, however, the way that I'm gonna define them are shallow. Okay. So we talk about this mile wide inch deep. We never get the depth in our classrooms.

There's a few reasons why we don't get the depth, and one of the re reasons is these grab and go things that we do to keep our sanity that we're not gonna stop doing because we have to teach multiple minutes a day for 180 some days. So the, our model, the minds on math model is not intended to be [00:08:00] 180 some days for all of your minutes every day.

However, it creates more depth in less time. So filling those other days, we need those shallow, non depth items. And I throw textbooks in there because textbooks are merely a checklist of what to teach. They do not come close to the depth of connections and associations. Of pure mathematics. So I wanna set us up today for, take me two months back in June when I started really heavy planning for this year based on all of my previous years, but really starting from scratch this year.

These are the things that I'm thinking about as I'm putting my lessons together, is that extreme depth of the model and how we generate that depth, and just the difference between a depth [00:09:00] planning and a shallow planning, a depth planning, and a shallow planning. And then that's the difference between a deep lesson and a shallow lesson.

And both are necessary, like kids can't cognitively handle deep lessons every single day, every single minute. Okay that's cognitive strain. So we need some like shallow, no-brainer, like things that are not deep to intermix with the depth. So as I'm thinking about the entire model in June and what I'm gonna be implementing in August, I'm just verbalized, I took a lot of notes this year in my planning because oftentimes I will show you these lesson plans that I have, but without the secrets of how they were developed and all of the thinking and decision making [00:10:00] that happened before I show you the result of the product is all hidden.

And then by the time I produce the product, I don't remember. The thinking and decision making that went along the way to make that happen. So this year I was very intentional at documenting. So as I'm thinking, as I'm planning, as I'm structuring as I'm doing my whole process that I do every single year, I would pause and I would analyze, okay, what did I just do to get to this point?

And that's what I'm going to give to you today, plus the practical. I'm gonna give you a couple of examples of things that I'm gonna be implementing like day 2, 3, 4, and you can walk away with that today. But it's really important to understand what goes through my mind or our certified [00:11:00] coach's minds as we're planning for the school year, and take you behind the scenes to that because.

The goal is I want us all to think differently about how we plan and design our lessons. There's an art to it, there's a savviness to it. There's a structure to it. Here comes our first grade friend, Amy. Look at that girl. She's here. There's a structure to it. There is a there's just an essence to it that you can't get in any publication or reading material.

So that's what we are bringing to you. So depth is our theme of the model. And if I take a few steps back, and I had to analyze this year, there are actually different categories of math content. [00:12:00] That I select from really on a weekly basis. Now, if Peter and the book Building Thinking Classrooms, he talks in that book about curricular tasks, non-curricular tasks, different types of tasks.

This is what I'm talking about, but it's not for the task or the lesson. It's for the overall content that I need to cycle weekly. Now, this is even new if you're a certified coach or you're a regular, because I really went back and did some deep digging this summer as to really what these categories are, and I'm not sure if these are gonna be solid or if they're gonna stick, but these categories.

As I was trying to think about this before I did any planning. And then as I was doing my planning of my slides and all of that concrete, like practical [00:13:00] stuff, everything fit into these four categories, so I kept double checking myself. So the number one category that we need to visit weekly in our classrooms is number that's probably not gonna come as a surprise to anyone.

However, much of what I talk about, there are two types, and I'm gonna do it this way, number in its sense of number sense, which is a very conceptual, innate. Type of experience. And then number as in fact, fluency,

which is a much more algorithmic, [00:14:00] procedural type of experience. These two things are equally important, however, they are completely polar opposites and the way that we have to think about improving number sense and fact fluency are two different types of thinking and the way that we provide experiences in our classrooms to improve.

Number, sense and fact fluency are two different types of experiences, but bottom line is number. Is a huge category that needs to be addressed weekly, whether it be through a lesson plan from the textbook. We, I, we integrate this into it, or a quick six minute stimulus or a quick, four minute final class [00:15:00] launch.

So one category to build depth is number. The second is lots of experience with symbol that is not even at our grade level symbol, that is above our grade level, because another part of engaging in really rich depth in during the school year is giving kids lots of exposures without expectation of mastery.

Lots of exposures without expectation of mastery. So symbol is the one way to give lots of exposures of things without the expectation of mastery. And I'm gonna give you a couple of examples. So something like two to the negative three, you wouldn't think I would show that to fourth graders, [00:16:00] but I do because I want them to be exposed to symbolic representation.

Because the bottom line is exponents are repeated multiplication. So think about this. Exponents are repeated multiplication and repeated multiplication, like repeated addition. Is iterating. That's one of my favorite words. Iterating, iterations, kids practicing iteration meaning repetition of the same thing over and over again.

Repeated multiplication, repeated edition are iterating. So repeated multiplication is exponent. Repeated addition is multiplication. [00:17:00] That is a mastery at grade three. So when our kids are, what? Eight years old, repeated addition being symbolized as multiplication. Really the mastery, the standards are at grade three.

So when we're at grade three and we're talking about repeated addition. Hey, that's multiplication and we want kids to master that at that level. First of all, at K one two, we better be doing a lot with iteration and repeated addition if we want the mastery of multiplication around about grade three, four.

Then at K one two, we need to have lots of exposures of multiplication symbol. So for example, four times five [00:18:00] multiplication can be symbolized with parentheses or a dot or an X or lots of ways. At k12, we want to be exposing this symbol and the way that we're gonna say this to improve number because really the way to improve symbol.

I'm sorry. Let me say that the other way. The way to improve number is to focus on symbol and the way to also improve number is our next category, and that is shape. So in order to understand symbol, we have to understand number. In order to understand number, we must understand shape. [00:19:00] And again, I'm gonna give you the practical, I'm gonna, I'm gonna show you a practical lesson on a slide deck today that is the result of this type of thinking, planning.

And you might say, I'm not sure I really care about this. And that's why we continue to have shallow teaching. Because we're not focusing on the right pre-planning items. So let me go back to this multiplication in this symbol. I wanted to give you the other pieces there, but lemme go back to this. So I need in kinder, in grade one to be showing different symbols that mean multiplication.

Alright friends, you’ve been listening to Segment 1 of our August Saturday Math. Remember, we hold several free events each month — and our next Masterclass is right around the corner. Just click the link in the show notes to save your seat.

Be sure to subscribe, rate, and [00:20:00] leave a comment, so we can keep sharing this content with even more teachers like you.

Go be awesome. Go be brilliant. And remember — you were put here for such a time as this.