When given the opportunity to play with mathematical materials and ideas, children demonstrate their mathematical understanding in innovative ways.
Browse
Imagine It! Choose Your Own Pattern Block Adventure
Anita A. Wager, Brittany Caldwell, and Jamie Vescio
Composing Tangram Puzzles to Support Shape Transformation
Laura Bofferding and Yi Zhu
Different types of tangram puzzles can encourage students to make sense of problems and engage in the computational thinking practice of debugging.
Challenging but Achievable Math for Young Children
Douglas H. Clements, Shannon S. Guss, and Julie Sarama
Learning trajectories help teachers challenge children at just the right level for their best learning.
Puddle Play!
Deanna Pecaski McLennan
Walking Away from a Mathematics Problem Is OK
Zachary Champagne
Providing students the autonomy and choice to learn when productive struggle becomes unproductive is a core teaching belief in the author’s classroom. This article tells the story of one student’s ability to know and express when his frustration was too great and how he chose to walk away from his work and return the next day.
Children’s Games and Games for Children
Nat Banting and Chad Williams
This article examines the mathematical activity of five-year-old Liam to explore the difference between the mathematics games designed for children and the children's games that emerge through playful activity. We propose that this distinction is a salient one for teachers observing mathematical play for evidence of mathematical sense making.
The Nuts and Bots of Math and Coding in the Lower Grades
J. Jeremy Winters, Kristin E. Winters,, and Dovie L. Kimmins
Use robots and coding to engage K–2 students with specific mathematics standards.
Asked & Answered
Each month Asked & Answered highlights selected threads from the MyNCTM community. MyNCTM is an online community where NCTM members can ask questions, start and join discussions, and interact with education experts. We encourage you to join the conversation at https://my.nctm.org.
Supporting Probability Understanding through Area Models
LouAnn H. Lovin
Moving beyond memorization of probability rules, the area model can be useful in making some significant ideas in probability more apparent to students. In particular, area models can help students understand when and why they multiply probabilities and when and why they add probabilities.
What's in a Name? Language Use as a Mirror into Your Teaching Practice
Tracy E. Dobie and Miriam Gamoran Sherin
Language is key to how we understand and describe mathematics teaching and learning. Learning new terms can help us reflect on our practice and grow as teachers, yet may require us to be intentional about where and how we look for opportunities to expand our lexicons.
