Children are having fewer embodied social interactions outside (Haidt, 2024). Thus, there is a need to create embodied activities that turn students' attention to each other and nature (Barwell et al., 2022) and that build from their interests (Frankenstein & Powell, 2023). Using a socio-ecological framework that centers on relationships among…

Teachers' actions matter greatly in the mathematics classroom, but it is not always clear what guides their actions or from where they come. As teachers strive to create rich and engaging learning environments, how they capitalize on a particular moment is often unclear. Sometimes just identifying potential pathways to take can be challenging. In…

Preservice teachers commonly struggle with topics related to fractions, ratio, and proportion. The use of double number lines can facilitate the teaching in these areas and provide autonomy and flexibility in mathematical thinking. Moreover, double number lines support many topics in the curriculum, including unit rate, convenience scaling, and…

Teachers can make number talks more ambitious and increase learning opportunities for students by debugging errors, promoting multi-student thinking, and orienting to make connections. This article describes the basic number talks routine and examines some common tendencies, such as "Serial Sharing." It concludes with a vignette to…

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…

Problem solving is at the heart of mathematics, and is known to support learning for a diverse range of children. However, challenges can be encountered when teaching mathematics through problem solving. This article provides insights from research literature into: (1) the nature of the challenges; and (2) some ways that problem solving can be…

In typical school mathematics, students experience problem solving in different ways. Sometimes students learn about problem solving by being introduced to different strategies, such as making a table or drawing a picture. Other times, problem solving is presented as a context for applying previously learned mathematics skills and concepts.…

In Japan during the 1980s, there was an interesting debate about how to teach the area of a parallelogram effectively to primary school children. Yutaka Saeki criticized the standard method, which relies on a cut-and-paste procedure. He argued that the standard method inevitably failed to convince children because it does not provide any cogent…

A major challenge faced by elementary education programs is the vast amount of content preservice teachers must master in various subject areas. With limited time and coursework, how can teacher preparation programs scaffold meaningful experiences and provide a progression of opportunities to aid preservice teachers in mastering this content and…

The authors use finding the area of irregular shapes as the context for developing flexible strategies for measuring area. This article builds on their paper, "Setting a Design Challenge: Promoting the Discovery of the Relationship between Area and Perimeter" (EJ1272407). As part of Lesson Study research within an initial teacher…

Using videos to supplement live instruction has gained momentum in the past year because teachers often scrambled to find ways to instruct students from different locations. The author, like many of her colleagues, began recording herself teaching short lessons and adding them to her Google Classroom library. But then she realized that despite her…

In this article, the authors reflect on how they would adapt the practices of a previous successful university-public school partnership with the ever-increasing adoption by districts of scripted programs for math instruction at the elementary grade levels. The partnership with rural elementary schools focused on improving students' overall…

This is the executive summary for "Teacher Prep Review: Solving for Math Success." It provides key findings from the full report and recommendations.

"Productive Struggle" refers to a strategy that gives students an opportunity to increase their background mathematical knowledge. Productive Struggle helps students connect key concepts, determine how and where an error occurs, and supports students in figuring out how to use their own thinking and reasoning skills to correct an error.…

This article provides an example of the implementation of school-wide professional learning as part of an Australian Research Council grant and the Catholic Schools Parramatta Diocese (CSPD) called Exploring Mathematical Sequences of Connected, Cumulative and Challenging Tasks (EMC[superscript 3] ) (Sullivan et al., 2021). By using sequences of…