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The Math Learning Center Blog

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Lake Forest School District in Illinois adopted Bridges in 2013. Teachers credit Bridges with helping them teach valuable life skills such as communication, critical thinking, problem solving, and positive student interaction. Additional significant changes include students’ increased risk taking and recognition that there is more than one answer and strategy to a problem. Bridges is designed to...
The Leander Independent School District in Leander, Texas, adopted Bridges in Mathematics in 2014. With Bridges, Leander students’ confidence in math is growing as they learn multiple strategies for problem solving. Teachers have seen improvement in students’ mathematical thinking, communication, and academic confidence that carries into other subject matters. As one educator put it, “Most...
The Learning to Think Mathematically series, written by Dr. Jeff Frykholm, is now available free from The Math Learning Center. These insightful books provide families and educators with innovative resources and novel strategies to help young learners develop powerful mathematical insights and problem-solving strategies. The premise underlying the Learning to Think Mathematically series is that...
Collin Nelson
Last year we added Math and the Mind’s Eye to our collection of free resources. Math and the Mind’s Eye is a supplemental program based on visual models that can be taught in sequence or used as individual lessons. The 14 units that make up this program cover math concepts typically taught in middle school but extend into upper and lower grade levels as well. To round out our secondary offerings...
Collin Nelson
Learning List , a K-12 instructional materials evaluation service, recently released independent alignment reports and an editorial review of Bridges in Mathematics second edition. Each grade level K-5 was found to address 100% of the Common Core State Standards. Number Corner second edition was also reviewed. Grades K-5 were found to address on average 95% of the Common Core State Standards...
Bridges students learn more than one way to solve multi-digit multiplication expressions. This enables them to select the strategy that is most efficient for any given problem. In addition to the standard algorithm that many of us were taught, fifth graders also investigate: Area model & four partial products Doubling & halving Ratio table Using quarters Over strategy While my students use the new...
The Number Pieces app is an excellent tool for teaching and learning place value. Here are a few activities that you can use with kids in grades 1–2. These activities explore base ten concepts and models within 1,000 that will help lay the foundation for learning double-digit computation. Activity 1: Ask the child to show a certain number using the base ten pieces. For example, 3 tens, 7 ones, and...
Jami Smith
The Pattern Shapes App is now available for download from The Math Learning Center. Here's a quick tutorial on how to use this new free math app. Jami is a media specialist for MLC.
Jami Smith
Dan Meyer, former high school math teacher presented a TEDtalk titled “Math class needs a makeover.” In this witty examination of a typical high school math lesson, Meyer outlines his teaching techniques which are anything but typical. Restructuring textbook math problems to contain far less helpful information has helped his students engage in real world math conversations, and most importantly...
Jami Smith
Art is an essential element of our human experience, offering aesthetic pleasure as well as a method for expressing and contemplating meaning. But what if art could also be used as a vehicle for building critical thinking and communications skills? That is the premise and promise behind Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), an educational program developed more than 20 years ago by Philip Yenawine and...
Rick Ludeman, Chief Executive Officer