Over the years, the author has learned that illustrated books can help dispel the myth that math is dull, unimaginative, and inaccessible. They can spark children's mathematical imaginations in ways that textbooks and workbooks often don't. Picture books can also help students who love to read--but think math isn't their thing--experience the…

Simple, classroom-tested probability activities that capture students' interest, develop critical thinking skills, and reinforce addition facts are suggested. All activities involve investigating the probabilities of the sums that come up when two dice are tossed. (MT)

Textbook organization assumes that students can naturally make the jump from practicing a particular operation to applying it. But for students to apply their computational abilities, they need a variety of experiences that books alone cannot provide. Ways of providing these experiences are suggested. (MT)

Math can be the sort of homework parents respect, children enjoy, and teachers savor. Suggestions for achieving this are offered. (MT)

Graphing skills are growing in importance in our information society, presenting facts and concepts in newspapers, magazines, and on television. Graphs incorporated into teaching develop children's problem-solving skills. Ways to use graphs in the classroom are discussed, and examples are given. (MT)

Presents two writing activities for math class that help students explore contexts for multiplication and write multiplication stories. (SR)

Several activities are described which give children experience with body measuring and estimating. Ratio and proportion and graphing are also involved. Samples of individual worksheets are provided as is a poster. (LS)

Writing is a key component in developing mathematics thinking and understanding. Four strategies to encourage student writing to describe thinking and reasoning are offered. Teachers can use this writing to verify student understanding of mathematical concepts. (MT)

Through her work as a consultant, Burns has found that a handful of students in all classes lack an adequate foundation in basic math concepts and lag far behind their peers in both understanding and skills. Students who lack a foundation on which to build new learning are generally not well served even by well-planned, differentiated instruction;…

Presents an activity to assess primary students' understanding of ordinal numbers and ability to apply those skills to new problem-solving situations. The activity helps teachers view students' reasoning strategies. Students have to figure out the total number of dots on a strip of paper when they can only see a few but are given a clue that a…

Using questions to help students think mathematically and solve problems is discussed. The teacher's role is described, with a classroom example involving questions about a specific problem. (MNS)

Providing students with realistic problems will facilitate a better understanding of and reason for computation. Specific suggestions for introducing and for increasing problem-solving skills are described. (CJ)

Presents literature-based elementary mathematics activities for the primary and intermediate grades. The activites are adapted from "Math and Literature, K-3," by the author of this article. (SM)

Presents activities that introduce mathematics to primary and intermediate level elementary students. At the primary level, students read a story about fresh cookies that must be divided and shared. At the intermediate level, instructions are provided for a game that introduces elementary algebra. (SM)

For many teachers, the storybook shelf is not the first place that they go to when they start to plan a math lesson. But children's books can be a great math teaching tool. They spark students' imaginations in ways that exercises in textbooks or workbooks often don't. In this article, the author shares three possible lessons based on favorite…