Culture and language play important roles in counting techniques, affecting how students learn math around the globe.

Success in math is important to all students; it provides them with college and career options in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In the middle grades, students build upon the critical skills taught in elementary school and prepare for entry into algebra, which is considered a gateway to later achievement in school…

If teachers have a deeper comprehension of their students' reading ability, it may lead to students' improved literacy and understanding of the subject. The account presented in this article of the author's growing interest in mathematical literacy specifically involves mathematical reading. This shift in interest began with a six-week…

Open-ended mathematical tasks provide great opportunities for students to engage in authentic mathematical practices, such as conjecturing, generalizing, and justifying. Supporting students in open-ended tasks can be challenging. Appropriate scaffolding of a task has been linked to more opportunities for student learning and better student…

Middle school students need relevant, meaningful contexts to apply emerging mathematical ideas. In this project, through the context of an architecture investigation, seventh-grade students engaged in mathematics involving area, surface area, volume, ratios and proportional thinking, number sense, and technology integration. Students, working in…

When students begin work with fraction division in fifth grade or sixth grade, they bring with them experiences from whole-number division. Many students think that a division problem should lead to a quotient that is smaller than the dividend. It is also common for students to believe that the dividend should be larger than the divisor. Many, if…

Some people recognize a palindrome when they see one, however fewer realize that a palindrome is a special case of a pattern and that these patterns are all around. Palindromes frequently occur in names, both of vehicles and people, and in music. The traditional mathematical curriculum has often left palindromes out of the common vernacular. Where…

The Scaffolding Numeracy in the Middle Years 2003-2006 Project (SNMY) focussed on the efficacy of an assessment-guided approach to improving student outcomes in numeracy in Years 4-8. The project was prompted by previous research (e.g., Siemon, Virgona & Corneille, 2001), which identified an "eight-year" range in student mathematical achievement…

Is the time allowed for National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) numeracy tests sufficient? Is there any evidence that students run out of time and, if so, what are the implications for teachers who prepare students for NAPLAN numeracy tests? In each of the 2010 Years 7 and 9 numeracy tests students were required to complete 32…

This article presents a lesson that focuses on numeracy. In the lesson, students were tasked to find the best path for a new expressway. The purpose of the activity was for students to gain an appreciation of the complexities associated with designing public infrastructure and to put into practice the mathematical skills. This article also…

This article describes a teacher's Maths lesson that focuses on numeracy in health and physical education learning area. In the lesson, the students were learning about Directed Numbers, something they often struggle with and a topic where the teacher finds it hard to explain using real life situations when using addition and subtraction. The…

A perpetual dilemma of schooling is how to help students develop skills needed for everyday life, including the work world. Quantitative literacy, also called numeracy, involves an ability to apply essential mathematics skills to authentic or near-authentic tasks. Carefully planned classroom activities can help students develop these important…

The introduction of negative numbers should mean that mathematics can be twice as much fun, but unfortunately they are a source of confusion for many students. Difficulties occur in moving from intuitive understandings to formal mathematical representations of operations with negative and positive integers. This paper describes a series of…

This paper reports on the experiences of a group of teachers engaged in an action research project to develop critical numeracy classrooms. The teachers initially explored how contexts in the media could be used as bases for activities to encourage student discernment and critical thinking about the appropriate use of the underlying mathematical…

Interpreting graphs found in various content areas is an important skill for students, especially in light of high-stakes testing. In addition, reading and understanding graphs is an important part of numeracy, or numeric literacy, a skill necessary for informed citizenry. This article explores the different categories of graphs, provides…