In this article, the author describes the development and implementation of a measurement-based group activity designed to support students in understanding the connection between angle magnitude and the shape of the sine function. She explains that the benefit of this activity is that it allows students to build their trigonometric knowledge…

Learning to reason spatially is increasingly recognized as an essential component of geometry education. Generally taken to be the "ability to represent, generate, transform, communicate, document, and reflect on visual information," "spatial reasoning" uses the spatial relationships between objects to form ideas. Spatial thinking takes a variety…

Many students at all levels--from middle school to graduate programs for in-service teachers--struggle with visualizing three-dimensional shapes. Many also are challenged to locate appropriate centers of rotation, placement of lines of symmetry, and translation vectors for transformations on the plane. Hands-on experience helps with these…

The triangle congruence conditions are a central focus to nearly any course in Euclidean geometry. The author presents a hands-on activity that uses straws and pipe cleaners to explore and justify the triangle congruence conditions. (Contains 4 figures.)

In mathematics, developing a conceptual understanding and observing properly modeled methods rarely lead to successful student performance. The student must participate. As with bike riding, participation with monitoring and guidance makes initial efforts meaningful and beneficial. In this article, the authors share a bike riding experience and…

A WebQuest is an inquiry-based lesson plan that uses the Internet. This article explains what a WebQuest is, shows how to create one, and provides an example. When engaged in a WebQuest, students use technology to experience cooperative learning and discovery learning while honing their research, writing, and presentation skills. It has been found…

Introduces service learning and explores how it can be used in mathematics education. Relates experiences of using service learning in mathematics classes. (ASK)

Plane figures constructed with curves of constant width "roll" evenly. The circle is but one example of such figures. Presented is an activity to direct students in the construction of a plane figure with curves of constant width which is not a circle. (JP)

The organization of a class project involving the writing of a book on matrix algebra is described; benefits of the project for both the students and the teacher are discussed. (DT)

Tac Tix is a board game for two players having a mathematical optimum strategy for play. The strategy can be discovered by application of general problem solving techniques. (JP)

Two ideas of mathematics that the students discuss here, demonstrate how sometimes a teacher can learn something new from the students. The examples given use geoboard and show relationships of the two ideas with the Pick's theorem.

Five steps common to different problem solving models are listed. Next, seven specific abilities related to solving problems are discussed and examples given. Sample activities, appropriate to help in developing these specific abilities, are suggested. (LS)