"When am I ever going to use this?" This question is heard or thought in every middle-level math class across the land. Teachers struggle to apply math lessons to everyday life and make math meaningful and useful for their students. This author, too, struggled with this problem, until she read the book "Math Curse" by Jon Scieszka (Viking Books,…

Teaching K-8 is published eight times during the school year. Every issue of Teaching K-8 staff visits every school for there cover story, complete with pictures to provide a window into the life of school. Every issue has a curriculum focus with 3-5 features, written by classroom teachers, with detail lessons and best practice for using…

Negative numbers extend our number line and greatly simplify our calculations, but sometimes students struggle with the concepts. These fun activities will help kids to make sense of the "other half" of our number system.

Since 1990, the January issue of "Teaching Pre K-8" has highlighted a school visit by the president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. This article discusses Cathy Seeley's visit to a 6th grade classroom at the J. E. Pearce Middle School in Austin, Texas, where she participated in a math activity from the Connected…