Archive
Recent Newsletter Articles
8 Math Skills Students Must Be Able to Do Without A Calculator (on the GED)
The GED test includes a section on the math test where students cannot access the calculator. Here the GED Testing Services explicitly breaks down skills students should be able to perform without a calculator on the test. Read More
Achieve the Core – Math Standards
The site describes itself as "full of free content designed to help educators understand and implement the Common Core and other college and career ready standards." Resources include CCRS-aligned tasks, activities, lessons and more, but also materials to support educators in understanding the standards and the content. Read More
An Excellent Lesson for Long Division
This blog post offers some important aspects to consider in how we teach long division to our students. How does place value play a role in long division, and how do I teach long division so my students strengthen that understanding? The post includes video, a word problem, and a lesson plan that you could use tomorrow! Read More
Another Blog Post About Fraction Division
This blog post was created to help teachers understand a strategy for making division with fractions visual and meaningful for students. Read More
AREA: Big Cheez-its & Multiplication and Rectangles
Two children discuss whether "Big Cheez-its" are really twice as big as regular Cheez-its. While the learners in this case are children, numeracy students of all ages could enjoy exploring area with a similar question. Read More
#MCTMequity – A Call To Action
A call to action from Sara Van Der Werf, a Minneapolis teacher and the president of the Minnesota Council of Teachers of Mathematics (MTCM) in 2016. Read More
Math Ceiling
This post from Math with Bad Drawings blog explores the following questions related to the Key Shift of rigor: Do we have a "math ceiling" where some math is beyond our ability to comprehend? If a student can perform the math task I am targeting without conceptual understanding (i.e., they know the procedure, but not why it works), do they really need more? Read More
180 Ways to Use Estimation 180: Inequalities
Estimation 180 is an incredibly rich resource that offers photographs that we can use in meaningfully developing students' number sense. In this blog post, the author uses 4 of the images (and the students' estimates about those images) to quickly and meaningfully introduce (or review) graphing and writing inequalities. Read More
22? 30? 50? 100?
A teacher of children blogs about a challenging experience working with a student learning to count. An ABE teacher of basic numeracy may find many suggestions in the comments of this blog entry very useful. Read More
What does text complexity mean for English learners and language minority students?
In this paper, the authors demonstrate how English learners can be provided with strategies for accessing complex texts, such as closely examining one sentence at a time, and argue that instruction must go beyond vocabulary and should begin with an examination of our beliefs about language, literacy and learning. Read More