We share two examples of student engagement in visible, mathematical thinking through a Chalk Talk within the four walls of the classroom, as well as the connected spaces of online learning. Five steps for facilitating the Chalk Talk are outlined, with descriptions of teacher moves for each step.
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Kelly Overby Byrd, Kayla Cooper, Raegan Bolger, and Heather Treece
Kym Fry and Lyn D. English
Grade 4 students engage in problem solving through inquiry in an agricultural science context.
Matthew Kandel
Students determine the usable lifespan of a pencil in this mathematical modeling activity.
Daniel Frischemeier
Bar graphs are fundamental to display distributions of categorical variables in primary school. Here is an approach using TinkerPlots™ to create bar graphs on different representation levels in small and large data sets.
Hoyun Cho and Carolyn Osborne
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. A personal timeline provides a rich and relevant context this month for students' to investigate numbers and number relationships.
Jody Guarino
Postscript items are designed as rich “grab-and-go” resources that any teacher can quickly incorporate into their classroom repertoire with little effort and maximum impact. In this article, classroom clocks are used as an effective tool to support student understanding of basic number, fraction, and geometry concepts.
Beth Bos, Lucy Wilder, Marcelina Cook, and Ryan O'Donnell
The Common Core State Standards can be taught with Minecraft, an interactive creative Lego®-like game. Integrating Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (iSTEM) authors share ideas and activities that stimulate student interest in the integrated fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in K—grade 6 classrooms.
Liat Zippin
This month, we look at how road trips are full of fun opportunities to explore patterns and combinations, departure and arrival times, and rates and ratios. This department features collections of short activities focused on a monthly theme that aims for an inquiry or problem-solving orientation that includes at four activities each for students in the K–2, 3–4, and 5–6 grade bands.
Terri L. Kurz
People who lay tile for a living use mathematics every day to decide how much tile, grout, and other supplies are required to complete each job. Measurement and geometry are an integral part of designing tile patterns. Collections of short activities focus on a monthly theme that includes four activities each for grade bands K–2, 3–4, and 5–6 and aims for an inquiry or problem-solving orientation.
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.
