Math anxiety negatively predicts young children's math achievement. While some researchers have suggested that math anxiety may stem from poor math ability, others have argued that math anxiety occurs at all levels of math ability. An important question is whether math anxiety predicts math achievement over and above foundational math skills. We…

Math anxiety negatively predicts young children's math achievement. While some researchers have suggested that math anxiety may stem from poor math ability, others have argued that math anxiety occurs at all levels of math ability. An important question is whether math anxiety predicts math achievement over and above foundational math skills. We…

A second-grade class visits Saint John's Food Pantry each year and spends the morning learning about the needs of the community. Then students pitch in and help the staff for a few hours. When the children return to school, they create signs advertising a canned food drive, and they place collection boxes at various locations around the school.…

The number of opportunities to respond (OTR) and spacing (massed or distributed practice) of practice sessions are important variables to consider in instructional design. The purpose of this pilot study was to compare the impact of these variables on trajectories of mathematics fluency. Second- and third-grade students (N = 112) were randomly…

One hundred four students aged 8 to 16 worked on one Fermi problem involving estimating the number of people that can fit in their school playground. We present a qualitative analysis of the different mathematical models developed by the students. The analysis of the students' written productions is based on the identification of the model of…

Ensuring students correctly understand the notion of equality is a fundamental problem in teaching mathematics. Is it possible to teach arithmetic in such a way that students do not misinterpret the equal sign "=" as indicating the result of an arithmetic operation and, consequently, viewing the arithmetic operation symbols (+, -, or x)…

"Math Expressions" is a curriculum for students in prekindergarten through sixth grade that aims to build students' conceptual understanding of mathematics and to develop fluency in mathematical problem solving and computation. The curriculum encourages student learning of mathematics through real-world situations, visual supports such…

Several detours prompted me to find time in an overcrowded school day to incorporate important, powerful, daily, whole-class application of fact strategies. A few years ago, I embarked on a journey with my second graders, a journey through the strategies for mental computation of addition and subtraction facts. The focus of that journey was to…

"Math Expressions" is a curriculum for students in prekindergarten through sixth grade that aims to build students' conceptual understanding of mathematics and to develop fluency in mathematical problem solving and computation. The curriculum encourages student learning of mathematics through real-world situations, visual supports such…

"Math Expressions" is a curriculum for students in prekindergarten through sixth grade that aims to build students' conceptual understanding of mathematics and to develop fluency in mathematical problem solving and computation. The curriculum encourages student learning of mathematics through real-world situations, visual supports such…

A robust understanding of place value is essential. Using a problem-based approach set within meaningful contexts, students' attention may be drawn to the multiplicative structure of place value. By using quotitive division problems through a concrete-representational-abstract lesson structure, this study showed a powerful strengthening of Year 3…

The purpose of this study was to explore relationships between app affordances and user abilities in second graders' interactions with mathematics virtual manipulative touchscreen tablet apps. The research questions focused on varying manifestations of affordance-ability relationships during children's interactions with mathematics virtual…

Recent research on annual growth measured using curriculum-based measurement (CBM) indicates that growth may not be linear across the year and instead varies across semesters. Numerous studies in reading have confirmed this phenomenon with only one study of math computation yielding a similar finding. This study further investigated the presence…

The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSI 2010) expect second grade students to "fluently add and subtract within 20 using mental strategies" (2.OA.B.2). Most children begin with number word sequences and counting approximations and then develop greater skill with counting. But do all teachers really understand how this…

One crucial issue in mathematics development is how children come to spontaneously apply arithmetical principles (e.g. commutativity). According to expertise research, well-integrated conceptual and procedural knowledge is required. Here, we report a method composed of two independent tasks that assessed in an unobtrusive manner the spontaneous…