Children's literature can provide useful contexts for teaching mathematics. In this article, the authors discuss the use of the children's book "Measuring Penny" (Leedy 1997) to support Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) (CCSSI 2010) related to length measurement. The authors first describe three types of misconceptions…

The first author's initial attempts at a whole-class mathematics discussion were woefully dysfunctional. Ten second graders showing their answers to a missing addend question about the number of children left riding a school bus did not result in the mathematical epiphany that the textbook promised. She did not give up on using mathematical…

The teacher displayed counting cards that included both dots and numerals in order from one to five, as she counted them with her students. She then turned the cards facedown, keeping them in order, and began an identify-a-hidden-card activity with the class. This class was engaged in the third of three card activities that develop number sense…

In this article, Lindsey Fowler describes how an animal rhyme--that she shared with her fifth-grade students with the intention of assisting them with the concept of metric conversions--made fostering the Standards for Mathematical Practice (SMP) more difficult. The addition of animals, which added an extraneous element that students mistakenly…