Journal Issue
The Asked & Answered department shares excerpts from discussion threads on the online MyNCTM community. In this issue, featured threads highlight responses to members' questions related to fact fluency and art-math integration in elementary school, number talks with middle school students, and classroom-tested contexts for introducing students to systems of equations.
Katie Makar, Helen M. Doerr, and Robert delMas
Statistical modeling allows students to construct and improve representations based on their experiences. A model development sequence is used with fifth graders to build models for comparing two distributions of the flight durations of paper helicopters. Emphasis is on the role of the teacher and using models as evidence.
Jennifer M. Tobias
In this article I describe my teaching experiences and how my classroom and role as the teacher has changed throughout my career.
Kelly Hagan and Cheng-Yao Lin
This is the final GPS document for February 2020
Jennifer N. Lovett, Allison W. McCulloch, Blain A. Patterson, and Patrick S. Martin
In this manuscript we describe a lesson that utilizes an applet we designed to help students develop a conceptual understanding of the concept of function. We describe how removing algebraic representations and focusing on a real world context can support students' development of these conceptual understandings of the function concept.
Kristen N. Bieda and Megan Staples
This article highlights the role of students' engagement in mathematical justification in supporting classrooms that provide equitable access to mathematics and develop students' agency for doing mathematics.
Shashi Kant Pandey and Jacqueline Shaffer
A poem based on the mathematical properties of a triangle supports evidence in the literature about the prose and poetic presentation of concepts as an attractive way to teach and learn mathematics.
Pacific Bloom, Terri L. Kurz, and H. Bahadir Yanik
Sickle cell disease is a very common disease throughout the world. We used it to contextualize probability for upper elementary school students. Using Punnett squares, activities guide students' evaluation of inheritance using theoretical probability. Then, students perform trials using tools to compare theoretical and experimental probabilities.
Kwaku Adu-Gyamfi, Michael. J. Bossé, Ronald Preston, and Derek A. Williams
The notion or expectation of simplifying final mathematical results remains problematic in that it is ill-defined, tied more closely to algorithmic versus conceptual understanding, and decontextualized from the content, purpose, and application of the mathematics in question. Through examples, we propose that simplification needs to be contextualized.
