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;…

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)

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…

This article describes a series of activities and worksheets to provide students with experience in graphing number pairs. Students at different lev els can use the activities to relate basic arithmetical operations to graphs. (Worksheets are included.) (SD)

Children at many levels enjoy using spinners to explore probabilities and practice predicting, tabulating and graphing outcomes, and observing results. Directions for making spinners, descriptions of several activities, and sample worksheets are provided. (SD)

Four activities and related worksheets are provided. The activities, all concerned with multiplication, are directed toward students at different levels, and deal with repeated addition, basic facts, and factorization. (SD)

Alphabet Math is an investigation of the order of usage of letters in the alphabet. Children collect individual data then compare and interpret it to make inferences. The inferences are compared to analyses of larger samples. How this is done is described. (MT)

Offers suggestions for presenting multiplication to elementary students at the primary and intermediate levels. At the primary level, the emphasis is on introducing the concept of multiplication; at the intermediate level, the focus is on numeration and place value (using grids and a place value game). (SM)

Discusses creative ways to teach elementary mathematics. At the primary level, the article suggests a book that introduces students to mathematical concepts regarding halves, calendars, and birthdays. At the intermediate level, it presents a learning activity that teaches about equivalent fractions as students design patterned squares. (SM)

The letters of the alphabet can be classified according to their geometric and topological characteristics on these worksheets. An additional worksheet provides for tallying the frequency of usage of the letters in three sentences. (SD)