Compares methods of subtraction used by children and teachers. Suggests ways to encourage children to invent their own subtraction algorithms. (CCM)

Explores the meanings of millennium, century, and decade, and introduces the notion of millennial age as one's precise age on 1 January 2000. Asks students to estimate their millennial age and explores various other computation and estimation activities using the idea. (ASK)

Presents a problem that uses the design show and asks students to find a series of moves to take the design from the top-left corner of a piece of paper to the bottom-right corner while remaining in its original orientation. (ASK)

Presents answers to the problem appearing in the January, 1999 Problem Solvers section of this journal, which was a strategy game called "Take Two" in which two players played by placing seven chips in a row and removing one or two chips each turn. (ASK)

Explains a non-standard definition of an ellipse familiar to astronomers and workers in celestial mechanics but which is not usually given in undergraduate text books on mathematics. (MM)

Offers teaching suggestions for activities using the TI-73 graphing calculator in middle schools. Topics include the number line, data handling, and algebraic thinking. (MM)

Describes the use of the TI-73 calculator to support and enhance the teaching of mathematics with 9-11 year old students. Topics include equivalent fractions, algebra, and data handling. (MM)

Geometrical representations can help students generalize arithmetic to algebra. Includes several examples including triangle numbers and models of cubes. (Author/MM)

This brief article describes a few entertaining math "puzzles" that are easy to use with students at any grade level and with any operation. Not only do these puzzles help provide practice with facts and operations, they are also self-checking and may lead to some interesting big ideas in algebra.

This article describes a team-taught, activity-based format to teach students about measurement. Alternative assessment plays a crucial role in providing feedback to students throughout the unit. (Contains 9 figures.)

This article discusses how paper folding can be used in the classroom to introduce the standard results of school geometry, such as the transversal and parallel lines results, along with results concerning angles in convex polygons and centres of triangles, for example. Angle bisectors, midpoints, perpendiculars are all straightforward…

"When am I ever going to use this?" This question is heard or thought in every middle-level math class across the land. Teachers struggle to apply math lessons to everyday life and make math meaningful and useful for their students. This author, too, struggled with this problem, until she read the book "Math Curse" by Jon Scieszka (Viking Books,…

In this article, the author relates how she designed a math activity she called Beads to use in conjunction with their school's 100th day celebration. Beads has provided her kindergarten class with many opportunities to practice a variety of math skills - counting, patterning, sorting, comparing, making sets, predicting, identifying numerals,…

This article describes an activity for secondary school students that may constitute an appropriate opportunity to discuss with them the idea of proof, particularly in an algebraic context. During the activity the students may experience and understand some of the roles played by proof in mathematics in addition to verification of truth:…

This article describes ways in which technology-supported mathematical investigation can engage students with substantive mathematics. It focuses particularly on the ways in which the NCTM Process and Content Standards for the elementary grades can be supported by the use of interactive software such as The Geometer's Sketchpad. (Contains 6…