The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) promotes creating resources that build procedural fluency from conceptual understanding through intentionally sequenced tasks that draw on students' prior knowledge and move from simple, concrete representations to more complex and abstract representations (Boston et al., 2017). Liljedahl…

Seeds of Algebraic Thinking comes from the Knowledge in Pieces (KiP) perspective of learning. KiP is a systems approach to learning that stems from the constructivist idea that people learn by building on prior knowledge. As people experience the world, they acquire small, sub-conceptual knowledge elements. When people engage in a particular…

Understanding negative numbers can be challenging for many students, as these concepts may seem less tangible than counting objects, which are commonly represented by positive numbers. In addition, the multiplication of two negative numbers resulting in a positive might appear inconsistent and puzzling to young learners who are used to seeing the…

Digital curricula can constrain teachers with ready-made instructional materials. The authors used Mathematics Teaching Practices (MTPs) to modify a digital curriculum to engage students in more thoughtful and meaningful lessons. In this article, the authors visit one of their third-grade classrooms, in which they used the prescriptive digital…

This article describes students learning to build their own numbering system by recognizing and identifying patterns with interlocking cubes in different place values. The students used the Egyptian hieroglyphic numeral system in conjunction with this activity to connect learning in other subjects. Students used prior knowledge of place value to…

Every student has mathematical strengths beyond knowing basic facts, solving problems quickly, or showing work clearly. In this article, the author presents Smiles as an "on-ramp" task that supports students working together by unveiling and leveraging mathematical strengths. Nielsen describes on-ramp mathematics tasks as scaffolds that…

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected student learning; according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (2022), scores for students in the United States have shown a decline in mathematics. . One way educators can strengthen students' current mathematical knowledge and bridge to new content is through Number Talks. Number Talks are brief…

In this article, the author describes strategies to support students in conjecturing in ways that promote their agency. Conjecturing involves justifying (i.e., a practice that promotes epistemic agency and engages students in mathematical reasoning to defend their claims; Bieda & Staples, 2020) by which a conjecture becomes proven, modified,…

Throughout their careers in education, the authors of this article have had opportunities to listen to the stories of their students. Their students have shared experiences and the impact of these experiences on their beliefs, identities, and confidence in doing mathematics. These stories have inspired them to reflect on their own practices and…