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The Math Learning Center Blog

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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...
Bridges has a new feature! The Weekly Wonder can be found on the Bridges Educator Site. The initial Weekly Wonder demonstrates how technology — the Number Rack app — can unlock the mathematical power of three little beads. Bridges sessions are often structured so that the teacher acts as the facilitator and the students essentially teach themselves and others; this is how I presented the Weekly...
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...
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...
David Moursund
We’ve been talking with educators at conferences, in workshops, and online about how they use (and love) our apps. This feedback is critical to making sure our apps stay useful and relevant in your classroom. Earlier this summer we updated the Geoboard, Number Rack, and Number Pieces apps. Next on our to-do list was Number Line. The Number Line app has always been a great way for students to...
Collin Nelson
Bridges students learn more than one way to solve multi-digit multiplication expressions. This enables them to select the strategy that is most efficient for any given problem. In addition to the standard algorithm that many of us were taught, fifth graders also investigate: Area model & four partial products Doubling & halving Ratio table Using quarters Over strategy While my students use the new...
The Math Learning Center is making updates to all of our free math apps. We’ve listened to your feedback, and we think you’re going to love the new features. So far, we’ve updated 3 of our 6 apps. Geoboard, Number Rack, and Number Pieces are all ready to download in the Ipad version. Web version updates will follow by April 1. Here’s a list of the new features: Geoboard Updated look and feel...
Jami Smith
The Number Pieces app is an excellent tool for teaching and learning place value. Here are a few activities that you can use with kids in grades 1–2. These activities explore base ten concepts and models within 1,000 that will help lay the foundation for learning double-digit computation. Activity 1: Ask the child to show a certain number using the base ten pieces. For example, 3 tens, 7 ones, and...
Jami Smith
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...
Jami Smith