The Math Learning Center Blog

Page 1 of 5

Spring Into Math with MLC Math Apps

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...
Kim Markworth, Director of Content Development

Memorization Versus Memory

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...
Cynthia Hockman-Chupp

Share the Math Love with MLC's Pattern Shapes App

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...
Kim Markworth, Director of Content Development

Welcome, One Hundred!

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...
Kim Markworth, Director of Content Development

Exploring Patterns with the Math Learning Center’s New Number Chart App

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

Introducing App Activities!

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...
Kim Markworth, Director of Content Development

Student Math Identities Inform Teaching Practices

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...
Annelly Rodas
Nataki McClain

Using Share Codes with MLC Apps in a Remote Setting

In a remote environment, how can Bridges educators provide appropriate scaffolds and be responsive to student thinking? Sharing MLC apps with students can be a powerful approach, particularly when working with students in an asynchronous setting. What does it mean to share with an MLC app? Put simply, Bridges educators can build a “saved state” task that they share with their students by way of an...

Utilizing MLC Apps to Enrich Learning

Physical manipulatives are locked away in classrooms, so teachers, students, and families are turning to The Math Learning Center apps to support understanding of visual mathematics in a remote learning environment. Usage of these free virtual manipulatives and models has tripled over the last six weeks. On Friday, May 1, more than 500 educators attended an MLC webinar on how the apps can be used...

Sharing Feature Added to Number Line

The Number Line app is the latest Math Learning Center app to be updated with the ability to share work between students and teachers. The process is the same as for Number Pieces and Number Rack: Set up your number line to pose a problem, show a strategy, or start a discussion. Select Share in the toolbar. Share the link or 8-digit code with others. Students can open the shared workspace with the...