El Dorado Middle School, Kansas, is using MAP® Skills™ from NWEA® to ensure every single student is getting instruction where they need it most, and it is having a huge impact on student growth and achievement, including special education students. Besides empowering students to monitor their own learning, MAP Skills enables teachers to move…

This study investigated how the use of virtual manipulatives in integer instruction impacts student achievement for integer addition and subtraction. Of particular interest was the influence of using virtual manipulatives on students' ability to create and translate among representations for integer computation. The research employed a…

"Saxon Math" is a textbook series covering grades K-12 based on incremental development and continual review of mathematical concepts to give students time to learn and practice concepts throughout the year. The series is aligned with standards of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and various states, and can be…

The transition to middle school is often marked by decreased academic achievement and increased emotional stress, and African American children exposed to social risk may be especially vulnerable during this transition. To identify mediators and protective factors, the authors related severity and timing of risk exposure to academic achievement…

This study analyzed how one teacher used contemporary children's literature to supplement middle-grades geometry. The teacher's students were matched to students in other classes on general reading, general mathematics, and geometry. Student and teacher interviews, observation notes, and video tape recordings provided insights into fluency and…

Studies differences in boys' and girls' (N=158) mathematical problem-solving behavior in relation to two types of tasks, computations and applications. Differences were dependent on contents of tasks and gender. Girls rated themselves lower on confidence and attributed bad results more often to lack of capacity and to the task difficulty. No…

Investigated problem-solving methods used by 3 sixth-graders working on a variety of mathematics problems over the school year. Found that the students used different strategies: one used visual strategies, one a more verbal approach, and the third a combination of the two. Over time, all three moved toward more nonvisual, verbal/analytic forms of…

Presents an activity in which students use cereal boxes to describe, classify, order, analyze, graph, tally, and make connections and to study pricing, measures of central tendency, consumerism, measurement, and probability. (MKR)

Since 1990, the January issue of "Teaching Pre K-8" has highlighted a school visit by the president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. This article discusses Cathy Seeley's visit to a 6th grade classroom at the J. E. Pearce Middle School in Austin, Texas, where she participated in a math activity from the Connected…

These item specifications were developed as a part of the Arkansas "Minimum Performance Testing Program" (MPT). There is one item specification for each instructional objective included in the MPT. The purpose of an item specification is to provide an overview of the general content and format of test items used to measure an…

This guide provides instructional strategies and activities for improving measurement and geometry skills. In the introduction, the importance of measuring skills, the history of measurement, and instructional approaches are discussed, and a table matching activities with requisite skills is presented. The 16 activities include such topics as…

Evaluations of the "Long-Range Magnet School Plan" court-ordered desegregation program occur in 3 year cycles. This report evaluates the programs of three Science and Mathematics Magnet Middle Schools in operation in Kansas City, Missouri. After presenting a program description and evaluation design, enrollment and achievement trends at…

Describes a unit designed to integrate mathematics with other curriculum areas by drawing on real-life situations. This unit incorporates nutrition, calculators, and graphing skills to classify items from a grocery receipt and represent the amounts of money spent on each category in different graphs. (MDH)