Effective mathematics teaching practices include not only probing student thinking and selecting student strategies to share but also facilitating discourse and encouraging reflection about important mathematical ideas (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM], 2014, pp. 36-37). Encouraging students to use precise academic vocabulary to…

Graded Troubleshooting (GTS) is a powerful routine that teachers can use easily to engender students' metacognitive thinking and boost their understanding of mathematics concepts and procedures. This article describes a new GTS activity designed to prompt students to efficiently exploit worked examples when asked to diagnose erroneous examples…

Over the past few years, the author and her colleagues have been engaged in a teaching and research project that explores what it means to "connect math to the real world" and how to effectively design and implement mathematics lessons that integrate real-world, sociopolitical issues with mathematics in elementary classrooms.…

Mathematics is most engaging when students see the relevance to their own lives and communities (Civil, 2002; National Council of Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM], 2000). The Temporary Skate-Safe Area task is an example of how mathematical modeling can be used to solve a real-world problem in a way that promotes mathematical belonging, social…

This article presents a set of "work-sharing routines," which teachers can use to broaden their repertoire of using student work, with an eye toward cultivating students' belonging. The authors define work-sharing as using actual mathematical student work, ideally from students in the class, to facilitate learning. Although there are…

Incorporating open-ended real-world tasks enhances students' access to mathematical and real-life knowledge and maximizes learning experiences. This article examines how a secondary mathematics teacher used an open-ended problem on distributing pay raises to teach mathematical concepts and fairness to students. The teacher's actions exemplify…

The authors wondered if there was a way to support their reluctant Grades 4, 5, and 6 students in contributing their starting points and strategies and advancing their collective knowledge. They wanted to ensure that the students had the space to develop and take ownership of the strategies they produced through a visual representation of ideas…

For over a decade, Which One Doesn't Belong? (WODB; Danielson, 2016) has been a beloved classroom routine that invites students to engage in mathematical decision-making and justification. In the WODB routine, four related figures are shown to students, and they are asked to decide which of them doesn't belong with the other three. The beauty of…

The authors developed an instructional nudges as part of a larger research project. These instructional nudges are designed to be small but powerful changes to teachers' existing practices. Some instructional nudges focus on modifying tasks used in classrooms. In this article, the authors share Rate and Review. The goal of Rate and Review is to…

Seeds of Algebraic Thinking comes from the Knowledge in Pieces (KiP) perspective of learning. KiP is a systems approach to learning that stems from the constructivist idea that people learn by building on prior knowledge. As people experience the world, they acquire small, sub-conceptual knowledge elements. When people engage in a particular…

Metacognition supports students in successfully working through struggle by equipping them with the tools to maintain an awareness of what they are doing and to change directions when needed to overcome obstacles. Thus, it is of little surprise that effective problem solvers spend a significant amount of time analyzing tasks relative to the amount…

Even though there is a great temptation as teachers to share what is known, many are aware of an idea called "rules that expire" (RTE) and have realized the importance of avoiding them. There is evidence that students need to understand mathematical concepts and that merely presenting rules to carry out in a procedural and disconnected…

This article details an exploratory data analysis project using the Common Online Data Analysis Platform (CODAP) based on the "Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education" (GAISE) four-part statistical problem-solving model. The project goal was to answer what similarities and differences exist within the school…

Mathematical modeling involves using mathematics to represent, analyze, and make predictions or decisions about real- world situations. Garfunkel and Montgomery (2016) elaborate on six components of the mathematical modeling process, including identifying the problem, making assumptions and identifying variables, doing the math, analyzing and…