This article describes how a sixth-grade teacher's "missing word" task uncovered higher-level thinking and engaged her students in the Standards for Mathematical Practice. The role and selection of the task promotes higher-level thinking and connects to the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. The task required students to apply…

Many teachers have designed lessons for students who will be working in groups to discuss and solve a problem. After investing time in constructing an interesting problem, creating strategically designed groups, and introducing the problem carefully, teachers may be left wondering how to help students collaborate to make sense of mathematical…

Too often the discourse of the mathematics classroom is defined as the teacher asking the questions and the students answering them--or trying to. Certainly teachers should not be prohibited from asking questions, but if students are always placed in the position of responding rather than initiating, then one can hardly be surprised if at times…

By working through well-designed tasks, students can expand their thinking about mathematical ideas and their approaches to solving mathematical problems. They can come to see the value of looking at tasks from different perspectives and of using different representations. This article discusses four tasks that encourage high school students and…

The mathematical topic of inverse functions is an important element of algebra courses at the high school and college levels. The inverse function concept is best understood by students when it is presented in a familiar, real-world context. In this article, the authors discuss some misconceptions about inverse functions and suggest some…

This article introduces a trigonometric field (TF) that extends the field of real numbers by adding two new elements: sin and cos--satisfying an axiom sin[superscript 2] + cos[superscript 2] = 1. It is shown that by assigning meaningful names to particular elements of the field, all known trigonometric identities may be introduced and proved. Two…

One of the most fundamental math skills for students to learn is basic computational skills. Students who have difficulty learning math skills may benefit from representational approaches, such as TouchMath. A multiprobe, multiple baseline, across-participants design was used in this study to investigate the use of TouchMath with students with…

Teaching mathematics using graphic calculators has been an issue of didactic discussions for years. Finding ways in which graphic calculators can enrich the development process of creative activity in mathematically gifted students between the ages of 16-17 is the focus of this article. Research was conducted using graphic calculators with…

Researchers have documented the positive effects of classwide peer tutoring on academic performance, engagement, and other social behaviors of students with and without disabilities. Commonly, in classwide peer tutoring, students are paired and the class is divided in half. Points are awarded for tutoring behavior and academic responding during…

Sixty four preservice teachers taking a mathematics methods class for middle schools were given 3 math problems: multiply a three digit number by a two digit number; divide a whole number by a fraction; and compare the volume of two cylinders made in different ways from the same rectangular sheet. They were to a) solve them, explaining their…

This paper summarizes difficulties that chemistry students at all levels commonly exhibit when translating, manipulating, and interpreting mathematical expressions that contain logarithms, and offers approaches that the authors have found useful to help students overcome such difficulties. The online supplement provides problem sets created by the…

The author of this article, while recently working through some problem sets on determining volumes by triple integrals in cylindrical and spherical coordinate systems, realized that, although the textbook he was using included many interesting problems involving spheres, cylinders and cones and the increasingly complex solids that arose from the…

Another way to divide a line segment discovered by Nathan Besteman is described along with Euclid's and the GLaD construction. The related projects and problems that teachers of geometry can assign to their students are also presented.

The greatest benefit of including leap year in the calculation is not to increase precision, but to show students that a problem can be solved without such presumption. A birthday problem is analyzed showing that calculating a leap-year birthday probability is not a frivolous computation.

Math anxiety is an affliction that causes several intelligent students to believe, mistakenly, that they lack the ability to master the subject. Professors are starting to question their teaching tactics in hopes of tackling math anxiety, with some educators looking at ways to make their classes more interactive, while others are considering…