"Mathematics Teaching On Target" is a guidebook for improving mathematics teaching, based on the Teaching for Robust Understanding (TRU) Framework and its five dimensions -- The Mathematics, Cognitive Demand, Equitable Access, Agency, Ownership, and Identity, and Formative Assessment. You'll be guided to refine your classroom activities…

"What" and "how" young children are thinking are typically expressed and shared at home and school through verbal and written modes of communication. As a visual language framework conceived and developed by David Hyerle, Thinking Maps® offers an additional way for learners to represent their ideas by visually mapping their…

It is not common to introduce current astronomy in school lessons. This article presents a set of experiments about gravitational lenses. It is normal to simulate them by means of computers, but it is very simple to simulate similar effects using a drinking glass full of liquid or using only the glass base. These are, of course, cheap and easy…

Teachers are--rightly--exhorted to challenge children so as to help them maximise their abilities, broaden their horizons and increase their achievement. But what exactly are challenging activities? And how can teachers be sure they embed challenge in everyday school life? If teachers understand the principles of challenge they can improve…

The authors describe an incidental learning approach using supplementary reading sources such as bumper stickers, t-shirts, and novelty buttons to encourage gifted students' analysis and synthesis skills. (CL)

The open-approach teaching method, a problem-solving method, is described, with examples of situations and problems that are suitable for this approach. The teaching-learning process and educational implications are discussed. (MNS)

Provides suggestions for activating prior knowledge, getting children to be aware when their comprehension is lagging, and tying it all together at the end. (FL)

Challenges teachers to explore teacher talk and distinguish messages that unwittingly encourage dependence on authority from those that support the growth of academic autonomy through discovering relationships, developing speed and accuracy in skills, and developing understandings that serve problem solving in projects and activities. (MKR)

Describes second graders' responses to finding the sum of the numbers from 1 through 10 after reading the book, Ten Black Dots. Includes student work demonstrating their problem solving. (MKR)

Argues that teaching for poetic thought develops not only poets and lovers of poetry, but also readers, dreamers, and doers. Offers suggestions on how it is done.(FL)

The author urges art educators to contribute to holistic education by emphasizing the unique and alternative modes of thinking and acting which are intrinsic to visual arts. He presents two exercises to help students develop a perceptual rather than conceptual or linguistic mode. (Author/SJL)

Detailed is a strategy for teaching the transformation of word problems into equations, equation systems, or inequalities. Classroom experiments using the method are described and are favorable. The underlying philosophy of the method is that the transformation will be accomplished by means of comprehension at first, but in the second stage the…

Instruction in estimation is proposed as a natural context to develop and practice important thinking skills. These skills are described and estimation activities are proposed for each. (MNS)

One view of mathematical thinking is described, followed by detailing of the characteristics of a problem-solving program necessary to develop this kind of thinking. (MNS)

Fifteen exercises are presented that are intended to increase reading comprehension in seventh and eighth graders via emphasis on word recognition, language comprehension (syntax and semantics), and reasoning skills (including inference, analogies, relationships, and direction following). (CL)