This article offers suggestions for incorporating cognitive principles into mathematics instruction for students with disabilities, such as identifying underlying concepts and relationships and teaching them explicitly, and presenting instruction from a problem-solving perspective. A checklist is provided for determining whether or not…

Describes the use of a weekly blackboard session as a way to improve instruction in an organic chemistry lecture. The instructor writes problems on the board and either alone or in groups, students write the answers on the board. Later, they explain their solutions to the class. (PR)

Presents an activity on transformations that employs a story from children's literature. Emphasizes that books and stories that use mathematical problem solving not only engage children in the narrative but also give them opportunities to see how mathematics is used in everyday life. (ASK)

Describes the peer-apprenticeship learning situation between two students in distributed computer-mediated co-construction of mathematical meanings. As a result of assimilating the disposition towards playing with ideas, students were able to engage in meaningful idea-based social constructivism. Contains 60 references. (Author/ASK)

Shares two lessons in which students help teachers pose problems and discover the importance of posing problems properly. Presents a fifth-grade lesson in which students found a mistake in a proportion problem, and an eighth-grade lesson that discusses a geometry problem with insufficient information. (ASK)

Describes a typical fifth-grade mathematics lesson as taught in a Japanese elementary school, followed by a reflective commentary focused on problem solving, using manipulative aids, and multiple solutions. (ASK)

Discusses software for geometric construction, measurement, and calculation, and software for numerical calculation and symbolic analysis that allows for new approaches to the solution of geometric problems. Illustrates these computer-aided graphical, numerical, and algebraic methods of solution and discusses examples using the appropriate choice…

In order to help students more effectively, it is necessary to know how students use and perceive mathematics in out-of-school settings. Discusses some mathematical concepts and processes--such as the concept of function and the process of estimating--which provide evidence of students' mathematical ideas. (ASK)

Poses and solves several related extensions involving enumerating squares and rectangles. Describes how problem extensions can be developed and used in the classroom to motivate and challenge teachers and students to exert themselves mathematically. (ASK)

Describes how successful study of mathematics requires a set of problem-solving processes that help students reason mathematically, offers a context in which students can communicate their reasoning, and provides opportunities for students to link their learning to prior mathematical contexts. Discusses the three basic processes of Krutetskii's…

Presents suggestions for integrating mathematical problem solving into all aspects of an elementary school classroom. This includes taking data from such areas as attendance and lunch counts, numbers of seats needed for an open house, amount of money needed for field trips, and many more. The article offers tips for powerful problem solving. (SM)

Matrix organization can be used to construct math word problems for children with mild disabilities. Matrix organization specifies the characteristics of problems, such as problem theme or setting, operations, level of computation complexity, reading vocabulary level, and need for classification. A sample scope and sequence and 16 sample word…

Describes a student project that enables students to experience problem-solving strategies and construct their own understandings of the problem-solving strategies by researching the problem-solving process itself, uncovering and defining strategies that they can subsequently use to solve problems, and exploring the impact that attitude has on…

Describes students' enthusiasm for Tuesdays in an American community school in Greece when they get together in small groups to explore, conjecture, analyze, and solve mathematics problems. (ASK)

Presents the discussion of three teachers who were searching for understanding of problem-centered instruction in mathematics education. Aims to help readers reflect on how they see problem solving in their own classrooms and to reconsider ways in which they use problems in instruction. (ASK)