At the Math Learning Center, we believe that all students can make sense of mathematics. Some students just need more time, more opportunities, and more support than others. Our approach emphasizes problem solving, the use of faithful visual models, and a focus on developing fluency. In March 2021, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and the What Works Clearinghouse released a new version of...
It’s spring! The sun is shining, plants are growing, and frogs and bugs abound. At The Math Learning Center, we’ve created some fun activities with springtime themes to help get your math blooming! Like February’s popular Share the Math Love celebration, each of the following activities includes the Share Your Work feature. You can send students a link or code to access the activity, and students...
At MLC, we’ve put our hearts into supporting teachers in various ways throughout this school year. One of our most popular offerings, for Bridges and non-Bridges educators, is our collection of Free Math Apps , based on the visual models featured in Bridges in Mathematics. In December 2020, the number of visits to MLC’s Math Apps were more than ten times higher than visits in December 2019. If...
The 100th day of school is nigh! This point in the school year is significant for its place value importance, but it also indicates that the school year is more than half over. It is an exciting milestone for children, sometimes a relief for teachers, and a reason to celebrate for all. At MLC, the past few months have given us our own reason to celebrate the growing popularity of our free math...
The hundreds chart is an amazing tool for counting, skip counting, adding, subtracting, multiplying, exploring patterns, investigating place value, problem solving, and more. The standard hundreds chart – with 10 rows of 10 and starting with 1 in the upper left corner – has been used in elementary classrooms for decades to allow for these very opportunities. In more recent years, charts of...
Patrick Vennebush, Chief Learning Officer Kim Markworth, Director of Content Development
Now more than ever, families are looking for ways to support their students’ mathematics education. They may not know where to start—the Bridges in Mathematics approach might appear a bit different from the way they were taught math. How can Bridges educators offer families a chance to see what a Bridges classroom looks like? How can they offer ideas and options for fostering their students’ math...
Now that all MLC Math Apps have sharing capabilities, we’ve launched an App Activities page on the newly redesigned MLC website. There, teachers can find a repository of app-based problem-solving tasks to engage and challenge students. You can search by keyword or filter by grade level, topic, or app to find an appropriate problem-solving task for your students. While I encourage you to explore...
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...
DeSoto Parish School System in Louisiana adopted Bridges in 2013. With Bridges, educators and district leaders alike have witnessed the transformation of classroom environments. Students are engaged, working together, checking one another’s work and truly understanding concepts. Bridges is engaging students in math and teaching them to become creative problem solvers. “Bridges creates that...
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...
