Try these meaningful alternative approaches to helping students make sense of word problems.
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Annie Perkins and Christy Pettis
Students are given a problem to break down rectangles.
Laurie Speranzo and Erik Tillema
Specific teacher moves and lesson planning can facilitate student empowerment in the middle school classroom.
Emily Dardis and Megan H. Wickstrom
Modifications to a first- and second-grade STEAM activity, Elephant Toothpaste, highlight ways to emphasize mathematical thinking by running multiple experiments, posing mathematical questions, and having students make both qualitative and quantitative observations. Contributors to the iSTEM department share ideas and activities that stimulate student interest in the integrated fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in K–grade 5 classrooms.
Clayton M. Edwards, Rebecca R. Robichaux-Davis, and Brian E. Townsend
Three inquiry-based tasks highlight the planning, classroom discourse, positive results, and growth in one class's journey.
Stephen Phelps
Edited by Anna F. DeJarnette
A monthly set of problems targets a variety of ability levels.
Jo Boaler
Engage your learners through tasks proven to significantly promote reasoning and problem solving, which touch on many of the Mathematics Teaching Practices in Principles to Actions: Ensuring Mathematical Success for All. These tasks are discussed in this article, another installment in the series.
P. Reneé Hill-Cunningham
Hundreds of species of animals around the world are losing their habitats and food supplies, are facing extinction, or have been hunted or otherwise negatively influenced by humans. Students learn about some of these animals and explore multiple solution strategies as they solve this month's problems. Math by the Month features collections of short activities focused on a monthly theme. These articles aim for an inquiry or problem-solving orientation that includes four activities each for grade bands K–2, 3–4, and 5–6.