The authors began this work with the understandings that (a) there is no “neutral” when it comes to the teaching of mathematics, and (b) mathematics teacher educators need to do something to help produce teachers of mathematics that develop students’ relationships with mathematics and push against the inequities that exist both within and outside of the classrooms in which they will teach. In response, the authors created, deployed, and studied a learning module in an attempt to enact antiracist mathematics teacher education. The learning module activities, the findings about the learning from the prospective teachers who engaged in the module, and messages for mathematics teacher educators who want to engage in this work are shared.
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Are We Preparing Agents of Change or Instruments of Inequity? Teaching Toward Antiracist Mathematics Teacher Education
Joel Amidon, Anne Marie Marshall, and Rebecca E. Smith
Teaching Angle as Turn Using a Code.org Lesson
Stacy K. Boote and Terrie M. Galanti
Elementary school students use physical manipulatives (e.g., pattern blocks) to make sense of the geometry and measurement ideas in a Code.org block-based programming lesson.
Chalk Talk: Engaging All Students in Visible Thinking
Kelly Overby Byrd, Kayla Cooper, Raegan Bolger, and Heather Treece
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.
How Big Is a Leaf? Mathematical Modeling Through STEM Inquiry
Kym Fry and Lyn D. English
Grade 4 students engage in problem solving through inquiry in an agricultural science context.
The Life and Times of a Third-Grade Pencil
Matthew Kandel
Students determine the usable lifespan of a pencil in this mathematical modeling activity.
Infusing SEL into the Elementary Mathematics Experience
Rachel H. Orgel
Returning to in-person learning after COVID-19, our goal was to use our district’s framework along with the CASEL 5 to help us address the social and emotional learning needs of our students without losing the integrity of the mathematics.
Using Fermi Questions to Foster Community
Kathryn Lavin Brave and Jillian Miller
Two teachers describe how to use Fermi Questions to illuminate the connections between the Standards for Mathematical Practice and the social and emotional learning competencies.
Introducing Grade 3 Students to Digital Data Exploration
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.
Revisiting Reinhart for Uncertain Teaching Times
Mindy Kalchman
Process-oriented, question-asking techniques provide a framework for approaching modern challenges, including modality pivots and student agency.
Developing Preservice Teachers’ Understanding of Area Through a Units Intervention
Megan H. Wickstrom
Preservice elementary teachers (PSTs) often enter their teacher preparation programs with procedural and underdeveloped understandings of area measurement and its applications. This is problematic given that area and the area model are used throughout K–Grade 12 to develop flexibility in students’ mathematical understanding and to provide them with a visual interpretation of numerical ideas. This study describes an intervention aimed at bolstering PSTs’ understanding of area and area units with respect to measurement and number and operations. Following the intervention, results indicate that PSTs had both an improved ability to solve area tiling tasks as well as increased flexibility in the strategies they implemented. The results indicate that PSTs, similar to elementary students, develop a conceptual understanding of area from the use of tangible tools and are able to leverage visualizations to make sense of multiplicative structure across different strategies.
