Share news about happenings in the field of elementary school mathematics education, views on matters pertaining to teaching and learning mathematics in the early childhood or elementary school years, and reactions to previously published opinion pieces or articles. Find detailed department submission guidelines at http://www.nctm.org/WriteForTCM.
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Ian Whitacre, Robert C. Schoen, Zachary Champagne, and Andrea Goddard
Instructional activities designed to encourage relational thinking in primary-grades classrooms can give students advantages when they reason about subtraction.
Imani Masters Goffney
Postscript items are designed as rich grab-and-go resources that any teacher can quickly incorporate into his or her classroom repertoire with little effort and maximum impact. Increase mathematical confidence by creating ways for students to show they are “smart” in math through Smartness Wordles™, collections of words in graphic representation.
J. Matt Switzer
Each month, this section of the Problem Solvers department showcases students' in-depth thinking and discusses the classroom results of using problems presented in previous issues of Teaching Children Mathematics. In this month's Problem Solvers Solutions, readers have a window into students' number and operation sense in the early elementary grades. Second and third graders were presented with problem-solving tasks using a hundred chart consisting of two number cards and a challenge card aligned to an addition or subtraction structure. Drawing on the structure of the hundred chart and prior knowledge, students were able to articulate their solution strategies.
Jeffrey Smith
Articles in this department showcase students' in-depth thinking and work on problems previously published in Teaching Children Mathematics. This month's scenario challenges students to consider elapsed time and requires them to convert between different units of time measure.
Amy F. Hillen and Tad Watanabe
Conjecturing is central to the work of reasoning and proving. This task gives fourth and fifth graders a chance to make conjectures and prove (or disprove) them.
Susan Jo Russell
To support mathematics educators as they consider implications of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) for instruction and assessment, Teaching Children Mathematics launched a series of articles beginning in the February 2012 issue. In this concluding installment, we concentrate on the implementation of the eight Standards of Mathematical Practice and the constellations of Practices and Standards. In the September issue, Matthew Larson follows up the series with a feature article that looks at CCSSM through the lens of mathematics education reform history and asks the provocative question, Will CCSSM Matter in Ten Years?
Alison Sternal, Lisa Milligan, and Melissa M. Soto
Students often rely on keywords in word problems without understanding the task. In this article, sample comparison problems are presented to encourage students to focus on understanding context rather than keywords. Postscript items are designed as rich grab-and-go resources that any teacher can quickly incorporate into his or her classroom repertoire with little effort and maximum impact.
Karen S. Karp, Sarah B. Bush, and Barbara J. Dougherty
Try these meaningful alternative approaches to helping students make sense of word problems.
Vi Tamargo and Tod Johnston
Making student thinking visible improves the feedback loop for the learner, the teacher, and the entire class.
