Multiliteracies provide a unique opportunity to students with extensive support needs (ESN) because they extend literacy practices to include print-based texts along with the visual, audio, gestural, and spatial modes, thereby engaging students in literacy practices and higher-level skills regardless of their fluency in language or learning…

In this article, the authors share frameworks for problem types and students' reasoning about integers. The authors found that all ways of reasoning (WoRs) were used across grade levels and that specific problem types tended to evoke particular WoRs. Specifically, students were more likely to use analogy-based reasoning on all-negatives problems…

The hammer-and-nail phenomenon highlights human tendency to approach a problem using a tool with which one is familiar instead of analyzing the problem. Pedagogical suggestions are offered to help students minimize their mathematical impulsivity, cultivate an analytic disposition, and develop conceptual understanding.

This article examines a common proportional reasoning problem used in schools, often referred to as the Orange Juice task. The authors show how these six strategies described by Nikula (e.g., Unitizing, Norming, etc.) and one additional strategy can be used to either solve or make progress in the Orange Juice task. The article presents work from…

Purpose: Providing insights into the need to go beyond superficial equity efforts in classrooms, the authors present a standardized test analogy to make the concept of oppression accessible and relevant for educators. Three levels of oppression (individual, institutional and cultural/societal) are described along with a brief overview of Paulo…

Online activism is a space of opportunity for students to encounter social justice issues, explore the possibilities of visual rhetoric, practice persuasive speaking skills, and actively contribute to the momentum of social movements. At the same time, digital activism raises concerns about "slacktivism," limiting the necessary…

Arguing from evidence is one of eight key science practices in which students should engage. It is an essential component of science, yet students have difficulties with this practice. We describe a scaffolded claims-evidence-reasoning (CER) argumentation framework that is embedded within a new eight-week, freely available curriculum unit…

"Instructional Sequence Matters, Grades 9-12" is the one-stop resource that will inspire you to reimagine your approach to high school physical science. The book discusses the 5E (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate) as a specific pathway for teaching and learning. It also shows how simple shifts in the way you arrange and…

Conventional word problems can't help students build mathematical modeling skills. on their own. But they can be leveraged! We examined how middle and high school students made sense of word problems and offer strategies to question and extend word problems to promote mathematical reasoning.

This article explores facilitating meaningful mathematics discourse, one of the research-based practices described in "Principles to Actions: Ensuring Mathematical Success for All." Two tools that can support teachers in strengthening their classroom discourse are discussed in this, another installment in the series.

Students become attentive, curious, and passionate about learning when they can see its relevance to their lives and when they're empowered to use that learning to solve problems that matter. Regardless of the subject or grade level you teach, you can infuse your instruction with the meaning students crave by implementing design thinking. Design…

Today, schools are introducing STEM education and robotics to children in ever-lower grades. In "Beyond Coding," Marina Umaschi Bers lays out a pedagogical roadmap for teaching code that encompasses the cultivation of character along with technical knowledge and skills. Presenting code as a universal language, she shows how children…

Engaging students with primary sources fosters inquiry, critical thinking, and deductive reasoning skills, all of which are vitally important to success in school and beyond. Simply inserting primary sources into the classroom is not enough. This resource uses the best of emerging Internet applications (Web 2.0) to capture the interest of today's…

A Concept-Based Curriculum is designed to help students uncover important, transferable understandings about what it means to be a capable reader, writer, speaker, viewer, listener, and thinker. But, too often, a well-designed, conceptual curriculum does not translate into conceptual teaching. "Concept Based Literacy Lessons" helps…

Working with language-independent logic structures can help students develop both inductive and deductive reasoning skills. The Japanese publisher Nikoli (with resources available both in print and online) produces a treasure trove of language-independent logic puzzles. The Nikoli print resources are mostly in Japanese, creating the extra…