The Math Learning Center Blog

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...

Meet Libardo Valencia What grades do you teach and/or what is your title/role? What school, district or institution do you work for? What location? I work as a mathematics teacher at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, New York. I also work as an adjunct lecturer at CUNY Lehman College in the Bronx, New York. During my career, I’ve had the opportunity to teach a wide range of subjects, from...

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...

Meet Angelica Medina Dual Language Elementary Educator at Oak Terrace Elementary in Highland Park, IL What grades do you teach and/or what is your title/role? Grade 3 Dual Language Teacher What school, district or institution do you work for? Location? North Shore School District 112 servicing Highwood and Highland Park, Illinois Who inspired you to become an educator? My third- and fifth-grade...

Meet Josh Labik Elementary Educator at Parkside Elementary School in Brookhaven, Pennsylvania What grades do you teach and/or what is your title/role? What school, district or institution do you work for? Location? I am a teacher at Parkside Elementary, currently teaching fifth grade. We are in the Penn-Delco School District located in Brookhaven, Pennsylvania. Who inspired you to become an...

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...

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...