What if Stephen Douglas instead of Abraham Lincoln had won the U.S. presidential election of 1860? What if John F. Kennedy had not carried some of the eight states he won by 2 percentage points or fewer in 1960? What if six hundred more people in Florida had voted for Al Gore in 2000? And what if, in that same year, the U.S. House of…

Students frequently have difficulty determining whether a given real-life situation is best modeled as a linear relationship or as an exponential relationship. One root of such difficulty is the lack of deep understanding of the very concept of "rate of change." The authors will provide a lesson that allows students to reveal their misconceptions…

The importance of mathematical discourse and its connection to developing conceptual understanding, communication, and reasoning is well documented throughout the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM's) "Principles and Standards for School Mathematics" (2000). This article highlights the differences between two kinds of discussions:…

The use of discourse in the mathematics classroom can be difficult to implement and manage. The same students participate in every discussion while others contribute only when called on, and even then their contributions are sparse. Some students make comments that relate to procedure but never reach the deeper-level mathematical concepts. This…

The topic of this month's department is writing macros in Excel. The examples given are of use to teachers who maintain their grade books in Excel, and show, for example, how to drop the lowest or choose the highest scores from a student's record. The Surfing Note cites a collection of online tools and resources for professional development…