This study examined the performance gap experienced by high achieving grade four and five students at the Kallang International Day School (KIDS) who were not demonstrating growth in math results from fall to spring as measured by the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test (NWEA, 2017). The purpose of this study was to apply the gap analysis…

"Deepening Students' Mathematical Understanding with Children's Literature" is an important addition NCTM's books that focus on high quality children's books to create engaging and meaningful tasks that deepen mathematics learning for pre-K and elementary students. Classroom teachers in early childhood and elementary grades will find the…

A good formula is like a good story, rich in description, powerful in communication, and eye-opening to readers. The formula presented in this article for determining the coefficients of the binomial expansion of (x + y)n is one such "good read." The beauty of this formula is in its simplicity--both describing a quantitative situation…

We describe a modeling project designed for an ordinary differential equations (ODEs) course using first-order and systems of first-order differential equations to model the fermentation process in beer. The project aims to expose the students to the modeling process by creating and solving a mathematical model and effectively communicating their…

Is anything more refreshing than going for a nice, long swim? The math scenarios presented in this article will take the reader back to hot summer days and remind the reader what a cool dip in the water feels like. Solving these problems is enjoyable and encourages the solver to think of the many ways that math is all around--even in the middle of…

Past educational reforms have failed because they didn't meet teachers where they were. They expected major changes in practices that may have been unrealistic for many teachers even under ideal professional learning conditions. Instead of promoting broad scale changes, improvement may be more likely if they are composed of small yet powerful…

To further understand student thinking in the context of combinatorial enumeration, we examine student work on a problem involving set partitions. In this context, we note some key features of the multiplication principle that were often not attended to by students. We also share a productive way of thinking that emerged for several students who…

The aim of this study is to analyse how mathematical problem solving is represented in mathematical textbooks for Swedish upper secondary school. The analysis comprises dominating Swedish textbook series, and relates to uncovering (a) the quantity of tasks that are actually mathematical problems, (b) their location in the chapter, (c) their…

The Puppy Love problem asked fifth and sixth grade students to use their prior knowledge of measures of central tendency to determine a data set when given the mean, mode, median, and range of the set. The problem discussed in this article is a task with a higher level of cognitive demand because it requires that students (1) explore and…

In this paper, we present a set of activities for an introduction to solving counting problems. These activities emerged from a teaching experiment with two university students, during which they reinvented four basic counting formulas. Here we present a three-phase set of activities: orienting counting activities; reinvention counting activities;…

Teachers and students commonly use various concrete representations during mathematical instruction. These representations can be utilized to help students understand mathematical concepts and processes, increase flexibility of thinking, facilitate problem solving, and reduce anxiety while doing mathematics. Unfortunately, the manner in which some…

This article argues for a shift in how researchers discuss and examine students' uses and understandings of multiple representations within a calculus context. An extension of Zazkis, Dubinsky, and Dautermann's (1996) visualization/analysis framework to include contextual reasoning is proposed. Several examples that detail transitions between…

The article opens with a Geoboard Triangle Quest in this form: "How many noncongruent triangles can be constructed on a 4 × 4 geoboard? How do you know? Justify your answer with significant supporting work." The use of advanced digital technologies as tools for problem solving receives much attention in the methods classes if the…

The purpose of the study was to determine whether there was any significant difference in speed, accuracy, retention and transferability between the Decomposition (DEC) and the Base-Complement Additions (BCA) algorithms for performing compound subtraction in non-decimal bases. Fifty-nine students with a mean age of approximately 15 years from two…

This mixed methods study explored the pre and post use of metacognitive problem solving skills of 15 undergraduate students enrolled in a mathematics class in a Midwestern university. Participants' progress in their metacognitive self-talk and group-talk was monitored as they used Pulse® Smartpens to simultaneously capture their writing and spoken…