"Shake, Rattle, & Roll" is a new program developed by The Actuarial Foundation with Scholastic, provides dynamic real-world math content designed to build student skills while showing students the relevance of math to understanding their world and planning for their future. Math skills are increasingly important for students. According to the U.S.…

The present study used a new assessment technique, the story-generation task, to examine students' understanding of subtraction scenes. The students from four grade levels (110 first-, 107 third-, 110 fourth- and 119 sixth-graders) generated stories under the constraints provided by a picture (representing Change, Combine or Compare scene) and a…

When the word problems of forty-five sixth-grade students were examined, multiple levels of understanding and misunderstanding multiplication were exposed. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the potential of problem writing as a technique for assessing the depths of students' mathematical understandings. Discussions include sample…

This paper presents a series of illustrative LEGO Mindstorms-based science and math activities, developed under an NSF GK-12 Fellows project, for elementary, middle, and high school grades. The activities, developed by engineering and science graduate Fellows in partnership with K-12 teachers, are grade appropriate, address pertinent learning…

This study investigates how a variety of resources mediated collaborative problem solving for a group of preservice teachers. The participants in this study completed mathematical, combinatorial tasks and then watched a video of a sixth grader as he exhibited sophisticated reasoning to recognize the isomorphic structure of these problems. The…

Over the past decade, research on the use of technology in the mathematics classroom has focused primarily on issues of student learning and engagement. In this article, we focus on middle grades mathematics teachers' use of The Geometer's Sketchpad, and study both the decisions they make about when to use technology, and their motivations for…

How do educational opportunities influence students' academic achievement in the Dominican Republic? How do students grow, in knowledge and skills, as a result of their passage through the elementary grades? This study aims to explore and understand the differences between the implemented curriculum in public and private schools in 4th, 5th, and…

Over the years the technology behind displaying the image of the unit circle has changed, but the defining features remain constant. The key question for the author as a teacher is this: are the relationships embodied in the image simple, memorable and rich enough to be grasped by any KS3 student at his school? It needs to be simple enough to…

This article describes the process of design and implementation of a hands-on unit on fractions in the sixth grade. The fraction unit, taught by a classroom teacher with the aid of a university professor, uses pattern blocks to help students develop conceptual understanding of fractions. Student misunderstandings and outcomes are presented, as…

This article describes one way to introduce fraction, decimal, and percent equivalents by linking student-created Op Art with examples of twentieth-century abstract painting. (Contains 7 figures.)

This article discusses the difficulties preservice teachers experience when they try to make sense of the standard long-division algorithm, describes a realistic context that we have found productive in helping our students think about why the algorithm works and the role of place value in the algorithm, and suggests the applicability of this…

This article describes how Lego robotics, interactive multimedia, and a simple manipulative--string--can be offered to students through coordinated activities to help them build a conceptual foundation for measuring rate. (Contains 5 figures and 3 tables.)

Sixth-grade students were exposed to two pairs of mathematics assignments. Assignment Pair A included a high-effort and a moderate-effort assignment, each containing 18 three-digit by two-digit (3x2) problems. Assignment Pair B was similar except the high-effort assignment contained six additional one-digit by one-digit (1x1) problems interspersed…

This article describes a lesson unit in which students constructed tables and graphs to represent the growth of different trees. Students then compared the graphs to develop an understanding of slope.

This paper discusses the three outreach projects in Kent, a girls grammar school with a mixed sixth form. Due to the selective system in Kent they have around 100 potential feeder schools with their Year 7 intake of around 150 arriving from about 70 different primary schools, some of which are independent. In this article, the author describes the…