The Math Learning Center Blog

With the end of the school year approaching, districts are making plans for a highly uncertain future. To assist schools and districts with their planning, The Math Learning Center is preparing a collection of resources that can be used whether schools re-open or if remote learning continues. These resources will include: Updated guidance documents to advise on how to prioritize content within...

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification. – Dr. Martin Luther King The facts have been piling up for many years… we have plenty of knowledge that Black Americans and people of color have suffered unjustly. The recent deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery are tragic reminders of things we already knew. And yet, we haven’t found the...

2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). Due to the impacts of COVID-19, NCTM decided to cancel its Centennial Annual Meeting and Exposition, which was to be held April 1–4 in Chicago. Instead, NCTM is celebrating the centennial year and supporting the math community by presenting virtual learning activities. Dubbed 100 Days of Professional...

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...

UPDATE (4/1/20): We have created Math at Home resources by grade level (PK-5) to help educators, students, and families with this sudden shift to home learning. *********** In recent days, we’ve had a number of conversations with Bridges educators who are preparing for the possibility of school closures due to the COVID-19 virus. These closures would obviously present a major disruption for...

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...

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 essence of mathematics lies in its freedom.” — Georg Cantor In September, The Math Learning Center co-hosted Portland’s first Public Math Day with Two Rivers Bookstore in St. Johns neighborhood. The mission of Public Math Day strongly aligns with MLC’s mission, with the goal to bring opportunities to diverse children and families by engaging and interacting with math in their daily lives...