Writing in mathematics is complex. The purpose of this article is to share how one teacher, Ms. Hill, used peer-review activities involving rubrics to explicitly communicate mathematical resources that students could draw from when justifying a claim. She found that helping students understand which type of statements could be used in…

Fostering algebraic thinking is an important goal for middle-grades mathematics teachers. Developing mathematical reasoning requires that teachers cultivate students' habits of mind. Teachers develop students' understanding of algebra by engaging them in tasks that involve modeling and representation. This study was designed to investigate how…

This article presents the results of a three-year study that explores students' performance on patterning tasks involving prealgebra and algebra. The findings, insights, and issues drawn from the study are intended to help teach prealgebra and algebra. In the remainder of the article, the authors take a more global view of the three-year study on…

Describes an action research project aiming to improve student understanding of decimal numbers through an instrument. (YDS)

Describes the impact of a performance assessment project on six teachers' teaching at Borel Middle School in the San Mateo/Foster City School District in California. Reports positive gains in student performance on the tasks over three years. (YDS)

Presents students' various solutions to a word problem. (KHR)

Discusses the subliminal images that students might have of mathematicians. Presents the disparity between boys and girls in envisioning mathematicians of their own sex. Explores implications for pedagogy. (KHR)

Describes a framework for examining mathematical discourse and shows how to apply this framework to appreciate the complex relationship between discourse and understanding in mathematics. Focuses on the role of discourse and the different types that emerge as students solve a particular task. (KHR)

Reports on a research project to use transformation geometry to give students an opportunity to work with proportions using visual models. (YDS)

Addresses the role that mathematical definitions can play in the middle grades mathematics classroom and focuses on the concept of angle as it was introduced to 6th grade students. Describes a traditional approach and an alternative approach to teaching the concept of angle. Illustrates students' concept images of angle. (KHR)

Reports the findings of a study that examined discourse patterns and the ways in which such patterns affected student learning in a 6th grade mathematics classroom. (KHR)

Discusses the importance of relating mathematics to students' everyday lives. Describes a journal-writing project developed in a 5th grade total-inclusion classroom and specifies the major features of the writing project, including the framework used to assess student learning. (KHR)

Explores middle school students' understanding of area and perimeter. Concludes that students need to construct visual representations of figures with given areas and perimeters, generate related word problems, and justify properties to grasp the concepts of area and perimeter. (ASK)

Recommends conducting interviews with students in order to grasp their understanding of fractions and provides interview questions. Presents results of a study using those interview questions and concludes student responses fell into three main categories: (1) described a mental image of an object; (2) drew a model of the fraction using a circle…

Explores misconceptions that students hold about sampling techniques on surveys. Highlights students' thinking and instructional implications from two studies that examined upper-elementary students' written and oral explanations as they responded to survey situations. (ASK)