Explores middle school students' understanding of area and perimeter. Concludes that students need to construct visual representations of figures with given areas and perimeters, generate related word problems, and justify properties to grasp the concepts of area and perimeter. (ASK)

Explores misconceptions that students hold about sampling techniques on surveys. Highlights students' thinking and instructional implications from two studies that examined upper-elementary students' written and oral explanations as they responded to survey situations. (ASK)

A word problem concerning weights of a pail containing different amounts of nails appeared in January 1997 issue of Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School. Teachers were invited to try the problem with classes and submit examples of students' work with a brief analysis. This article contains three student solutions. Argues that posing such…

Recommends conducting interviews with students in order to grasp their understanding of fractions and provides interview questions. Presents results of a study using those interview questions and concludes student responses fell into three main categories: (1) described a mental image of an object; (2) drew a model of the fraction using a circle…