Mistakes can be a source of frustration for teachers and students in mathematics classrooms because they reveal potential misunderstandings or a lack of learning. However, increasing evidence shows that making mistakes creates productive pathways for learning new ideas and building new concepts (Boaler 2016; Borasi 1996). Learning through…

During the author's eighteen-year tenure as a high school mathematics teacher, there has been one question that she has yet to answer: "Why don't students do homework?" On the basis of research, many factors may lead to a student leaving homework undone. A student may lack the drive to complete work out of school. Or a student may choose…

Presents a method to make precalculus college freshmen accountable to the class for doing at least some of their assigned homework problems by making each student an expert on one or more of the assignments. (ASK)

Eight techniques for studying mathematics that can be taught during regular classroom instruction are presented and discussed with illustrations of their classroom use. (MNS)

Presents three teaching ideas: (1) a scoring rubric to assess students' ability to communicate attempts at solving homework problems; (2) a three-part measurement activity using trigonometry, maps, and compasses to locate hidden treasure; and (3) a demonstration of the effects of numerical coefficients on graphs of quadratic functions. (MDH)