Teachers report that engaging students in solving contextual problems is an important part of supporting student understanding of algorithms for fraction division. Meaning for whole-number operations is a crucial part of making sense of contextual problems involving rational numbers. The authors present a developed instructional sequence to…

Spatial reasoning, which involves "building and manipulating mental representations of two-and three-dimensional objects and perceiving an object from different perspectives" is a critical aspect of geometric thinking and reasoning. Through building, drawing, and analyzing two-and three-dimensional shapes, students develop a foundation…

This article describes a teacher and class as they discover that their reading comprehension strategies cross over into mathematical problem solving. The students practice using visualization techniques to improve their understanding of word problems. (Contains 5 figures.)

Discusses the concept of three-dimensional perspective. Presents some assessment tasks to help develop perspective and describes student responses. (Author/NB)

The author recounts experiences introducing a first grade class to the concept of symmetry. The lesson includes activities for developing recognition of objects that have symmetry as well as visualization of both horizontal and vertical lines of symmetry.