Beginning a teaching career and working to prepare and support beginning teachers is a roller-coaster of successes and puzzling moments. In this article, author Cassandra (Cassie) Seiboldt shares how she learned to manage her first years of teaching by purposefully planning through anticipating student thinking and solutions, and the positive…

One of the most important roles of a teacher is to create a safe space for learners, consistent with the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) Universal Design for Learning guidelines (CAST 2011). Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for teaching and learning, based on neuroscience research, that guides teachers to eliminate…

Planning a lesson can be similar to planning a road trip--a metaphor the authors use to describe how they applied research and theory to their lesson planning process. A map and mode of transportation, the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) and textbooks as resources, can lead to desired destinations, such as students engaging in…

In this article, Ceyanes, Lockwood, and Gill use "The Geometer's Sketchpad" in a sequence of algebra lessons to introduce quadratic functions as the product of two linear functions. The lessons provide an enriched look at the creation of parabolas and allow students to experience the foundational idea that all functions are…

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2016), the number of public school students in the United States who were English learners (ELs) was estimated at 4.5 million. However, in 2005, the national standardized testing scores (Fry 2007) show that about 51 percent of eighth-grade EL students were behind other students in reading…

This article addresses the struggles teachers face when they attempt to change their teaching style in order to achieve an ideal mathematics classroom. With the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, many of the behaviors associated with an ideal mathematics classroom appear within the Standards for Mathematical Practice, on which…

The social and educational status of black male youth in the United States has been receiving increasing attention. In February 2014, President Barack Obama announced a new national initiative--My Brother's Keeper--for helping black boys and male youth or, to speak more generally, boys and young men of color, to "stay on track; providing the…

The 2012 U.S. presidential election is the perfect opportunity to present a timely civics lesson on how a U.S. president is elected. More important, it offers opportunities for students to reason mathematically about election issues--for example, about how much time and resources the candidates should invest in particular states. The results of…

The lesson study model of professional development that originated in Japan is becoming increasingly popular in the United States. At its core, lesson study is a means of bringing teachers together to carry out the process of planning a lesson, implementing and observing it, and then examining it during a debriefing session. The debriefing…

This article presents four-column lesson planning, an adaptation of lesson study, for preservice secondary school teachers. Four-column plans, an integral part of Japanese lesson study, have been less emphasized in the United States. This article presents study results indicating how these teachers were affected by this lesson study adaptation:…

Creating effective mathematics lessons can be a challenge for any teacher. One approach to design an effective lesson is using a before-during-after (BDA) format. This article describes what a BDA format is and provides two examples of how it is implemented in high school mathematics classes. (Contains 2 tables and 5 figures.)

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…

This article describes the use of microteaching lesson study as an approach to promoting collaboration and learning among teachers, particularly those in prospective-teacher education programs, through a repeated cyclic process of developing, implementing, analyzing, and revising mathematics lessons and reporting their experience. (Contains 3…

Presents an activity, including worksheets, that introduces the ideas behind CAT scanners and explains how they are used in medical research and diagnosis. (MKR)

Three approaches for teaching students to solve inequalities involving absolute values, quadratic expressions, and rational expressions are illustrated. Then one technique that can be used with all of these problems is presented. (MNS)