From the Archives highlights articles from NCTM’s legacy journals, as chosen by leaders in mathematics education.
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Catherine A. Little, Sherryl Hauser, Jeffrey Corbishley, and Introduction by: Denise M. Walston
Dorothy Y. White
Use this activity to support students in working together, recognizing one another’s contributions, and leveraging their mathematical strengths to solve challenging problems.
Amanda K. Riske, Catherine E. Cullicott, Amanda Mohammad Mirzaei, Amanda Jansen, and James Middleton
We introduce the Into Math Graph tool, which students use to graph how “into" mathematics they are over time. Using this tool can help teachers foster conversations with students and design experiences that focus on engagement from the student’s perspective.
Micah S. Stohlmann
An escape room can be a great way for students to apply and practice mathematics they have learned. This article describes the development and implementation of a mathematical escape room with important principles to incorporate in escape rooms to help students persevere in problem solving.
Kelly Hagan and Cheng-Yao Lin
April 2020's GPS department provides tasks for each grade band that invite students to reason with age-appropriate number theoretic concepts.
Erell Germia and Nicole Panorkou
We present a Scratch task we designed and implemented for teaching and learning coordinates in a dynamic and engaging way. We use the 5Es framework to describe the students' interactions with the task and offer suggestions of how other teachers may adopt it to successfully implement Scratch tasks.
Erin E. Baldinger, Matthew P. Campbell, and Foster Graif
Students need opportunities to construct definitions in mathematics. We describe a sorting activity that can help students construct and refine definitions through discussion and argumentation. We include examples from our own work of planning and implementing this sorting activity to support constructing a definition of linear function.
Rebecca Vinsonhaler and Alison G. Lynch
This article focuses on students use and understanding of counterexamples and is part of a research project on the role of examples in proving. We share student interviews and offer suggestions for how teachers can support student reasoning and thinking and promote productive struggle by incorporating counterexamples into the classroom.
Karen S. Karp, Sarah B. Bush, and Barbara J. Dougherty
Try these meaningful alternative approaches to helping students make sense of word problems.
Aaron M. Rumack and DeAnn Huinker
Capturing students' own observations before solving a problem propelled a culture of sense making by meeting needs typical of middle school learners.