The Building Painted Cubes Task is a groupworthy algebraic task. Students build cubes using linking unit cubes, search for algebraic patterns, and report findings on posters. This task can create spaces for students to see themselves as doers of mathematics.

This article models how to plan and facilitate implementing the same task in two sixth-grade classrooms with two different learning goals using the Five Practices structure.

This activity engages students with the concept of mathematics identity to expand conceptions of what mathematics is and therefore what doing mathematics and being mathematical can mean. By mathematics identity, we refer both to ways a learner sees themselves and participates in mathematics, and the ways that others speak about or treat that…

There is a growing reliance on plastic, even though it is a synthetic material that does not decompose. This article presents a series of six mathematics activities that use plastics as the context to teach environmental education to seventh-grade students. The activities can increase students' awareness of the plastic problem while also serving…

Integer operations are typically introduced in sixth grade, but they are a consistent area of struggle among these students. This struggle also inhibits their understanding of algebraic computations involving positive and negative terms. In this article, the author provides introductory tasks and models for adding and subtracting integers that can…

Our bodies help us learn, and our bodies may know something before we can articulate it. Embodied explorations are body-based learning experiences where learners have opportunities to make sense of and convey ideas with their bodies. These embodied explorations were taught at a suburban public high school, in the southern United States, that…

A primary goal of ethnomodeling is to value, sustain, and in some instances introduce cultural practices and traditions that have often been lost or overshadowed because of an emphasis on modern methods (Orey & Rosa, 2010). Through an ethnomodeling task focusing on geometric transformations, the authors share a Model It! activity to engage…

The reality is that textbooks and state standards have more content than can reasonably be covered for proficiency in most classrooms. In years past, this typically meant cutting the last unit or two or moving along regardless of who was keeping up, in many cases resulting in cutting statistics from the curriculum. This article provides five…

Statistics has been a content domain in the mathematics curriculum for decades. However, statistics is a distinct discipline from mathematics and there are important differences in how one should teach the two disciplines. In this article, the authors consider how these differences can inform an adaptation to the 5 Practices for Orchestrating…

Effective teaching requires enjoyable classroom tasks aimed at promoting students' learning of mathematics meaningfully, and previous research has demonstrated that the use of origami activities in mathematics classrooms can help achieve that goal. In this article, the authors describe their "LOVE MATH" one-straight-cut letter origami…

What tales would students tell about their mathematical experiences? Are they stories of triumph, boredom, despair, exhilaration, or, perhaps, all of these emotions? How do teachers access these stories to understand students' experiences and build from them? In this article, the authors describe a task, The Math Metaphor, and how it was used in a…

Inspired by the "Batman Equation" of 2011, this article presents a challenging and engaging process for graphing complicated designs from just a single parametric equation pair. Reinforces numerous analytic geometry skills. Works in popular graphing software such as Desmos or GeoGebra, or even graphing calculators.

This article dives into the importance of engaging students in investigating the mathematics of businesses that pressure their members to recruit new members as a basis for success, also referred to as multi-level marketing (MLM). The mathematics behind these businesses are discussed, and a sample student task is given.

Spirograph® is a classic drawing toy that has intriguing connections with mathematics. Inspired by earlier articles in "Mathematics Teacher" on the classic drawing toy that targeted higher grade levels, the authors adopt and create activities that make Spirograph mathematics accessible to middle-grade learners.

An university in Chile developed a Digital Learning Routes (DLR) for three elective courses in the area of mathematics: (1) limits, derivatives, and integrals; (2) probabilities and descriptive and inferential statistics; and (3) three-dimensional geometry. A DLR is a sequence of e-learning activities that seeks to enable learners to build…