The Math Learning Center Blog

Within the math education community, a lot of confusion surrounds the word fluency. Yet Common Core State Standards call for fluency at each grade level. Grades 2 and 3 standards specify that students know a standard “from memory,” phrasing which may further cloud our concept of fluency. In the Ignite Talk “There IS a Difference,” K-5 math educator Graham Fletcher explains the subtle yet powerful...

The start of a new school year is the perfect time for teachers to get to know their students as mathematicians. Exploring students' math identities means paying attention to their beliefs about what it means to be “good at math” and their perceptions of their own ability to do mathematics. We want to share some of the possibilities within the Bridges curriculum that will help teachers know their...

SEG Measurement, an independent third-party research firm, recently conducted a study of the effectiveness of Bridges in Mathematics using data from the 2015–16 and 2016–17 school years. Approximately 1,000 students from over 40 classrooms participated in the study. Students who used Bridges were statistically matched with students using another elementary mathematics curriculum in a different...

We’ve all been through it before. We spend months teaching our students mathematical content and over time, we start to see them making progress. And then all of a sudden winter break sneaks up, seemingly out of nowhere. And when our students return two weeks later, we find it’s stressful to review concepts that we thought were secure, especially knowing that there’s new content to cover. This is...

Our curriculum specialists recently attended a workshop with Jo Boaler, Cathy Williams, and their youcubed team. We left energized by three key messages and affirmed by recognizing how The Math Learning Center addresses them. Math is visual The Math Learning Center grew out of a project funded by the National Science Foundation to improve the teaching of mathematics. Our founders developed a...

The 3Rs—Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic—have been foundational in education for thousands of years. My recent book, The Fourth R, adds to that list Reasoning/computational thinking. It concerns using human brains and computer brains, individually and working together, to solve problems and accomplish thoughts. Like each of the traditional 3Rs, computational thinking is both a discipline of study...

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...

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...

Ah summer! It’s time for tank tops and flip-flops, watermelon and popsicles, and staying cool by any means necessary. If you have children in your household, it may also be time for some educational summertime activities. Summer break is an excellent opportunity to reinforce what your student has learned over the school year or to introduce new skills to prepare them for the year ahead. We’ve...

Children need lots of practice, with various activities in different settings, to develop a strong sense of number. My kindergartners love an activity I call Estimation Bag. I place a small plastic container inside a canvas bag, and a student adds a single type of object: paperclips, pennies, barrettes, etc. We start with 10 or fewer and increase the quantity to between 10 and 20 after a month or...