The Math Learning Center Blog

In this series of blog posts, we highlight educators in the field who are using remote learning resources intentionally to build classroom community, collaboration, and student sense-making. Bridges educators strive to develop safe learning environments that foster inclusivity and collaboration. This environment creates a space for students to develop a sense of belonging and engage in learning...

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...

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...

Although there are no specific lessons in Bridges that address the 100th day of school, it is a big day in kindergarten. After all, during Number Corner we’ve been counting the days of school every day since the first one! Students have been adding chain links and stickers to ten-frames, figuring out how many more days to the next 10, and problem solving “How many more days until we are halfway to...

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...

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...

The array model, used throughout Bridges, is the subject of “Arrays, Multiplication and Division” by Jennie Pennant from nrich.maths.org. The piece outlines how the array model supports development of a sense of multiplicative relationships and describes how to move students from building multiplication facts and tables to exploring division as the inverse operation of multiplication. The author...

Elementary mathematics specialists work as teachers, teacher leaders, or coaches and support effective mathematics instruction and student learning at the classroom, school, district, or state levels. The purpose of this scholarship program is to provide support to teachers in their development as elementary mathematics specialists. Winners receive $1,000 to enhance their knowledge, teaching, and...

Number Corner is a skill-building program that revolves around the classroom calendar. The program features short daily workouts that introduce, reinforce, and extend skills and concepts related to the critical areas of study at each grade level. Click image to view larger. For grade level specific content outlines, including scope and sequence and correlations to the CCSS and TEKS, please visit...

Math and the Mind's Eye units are a great way to introduce and extend visual models to middle and high school classrooms. This versatile collection can be taught in sequence or used individually as needed to supplement any curriculum. The MME donation program provides up to 25 copies of selected units. Here are the recipients from 2013: Aitkin Public Schools Clovis Municipal School District Eagle...