Elementary Math Education Articles for Teachers - Page 2

It is important for students to memorize their multiplication facts, however, it is also necessary for them to understand the significance of what they are doing. When students are in the process of learning about multiplication, the use of arrays, repeated addition, and number lines are helpful ...

When teaching students how to multiply decimals, I focus on two instructional strategies - the first is to focus on language, in particular the use of the word "of", and second is the use of grids to visually represent a multiplication sentence. The word "of" is important to understand in this c...

Place value is one of those key concepts all students should understand. Without this understanding, they will have difficulty performing most math operations. They need to know that the digit’s place determines its value. A lack of understanding of this basic idea leads many students to believ...

Every teacher faces the challenge of keeping students interested and involved in lessons. I've found that having some basic activity ideas that are easy to implement, and student-orientated, gave students something to do that was related to the curriculum, but didn't require a lot of preparation ...

When you are teaching students about probability, it is important to tell them that there are two types - theoretical and experimental. There are many different ways to teach students about these concepts. When you flip a coin 10 times, the chance of getting heads is ½ or 50%, and the chance of g...

Without a doubt, the source of most of the problems I have had to deal with as a teacher occur out on the playground during recess.  I'm sure you've noticed the same thing. Far too many times, I've sent my calm, well-behaved class out for morning or lunch recess, only to have them return in tears...

Teaching measurement is never an easy task. Some students have difficulty grasping conversion and equivalency concepts. But have no fear. When teaching liquid capacity, there is a superhero to help make these lessons interesting and enjoyable for students. Mr. Gallon has taught students about cup...

There are many ways to make geography lessons memorable and interesting for your students. For example, instead of having your students stare  at maps for a class period each time you teach a geography lesson, you can get them involved in some hands-on activities that cement and enrich the topic....

For many students, the multiplication facts are usually much easier to grasp than the division facts when learning about fact families. I believe that the reason for this is that students have a limited understanding of why the facts are called fact families. Students get used to switching the nu...

As educators, one of the most important lessons we ought to teach students is that of making connections. In mathematics, we can help students make connections between a concept and its real-life application. By doing this, we make information relevant, and help ensure that information will be ...

Baseball and math go hand-in-hand. If you had to pick one game that is loaded with mathematical data, it would be baseball.  Statistics is the main strand of math found in baseball. Batting averages, earned run averages, on-base percentage, slugging percentage......my goodness!  Statistics are ev...

As we all know, teachers love deals on things to use in the classroom. The Easter holiday provides a great opportunity to pick up jelly beans very inexpensively. They can be used in a multitude of ways for hands-on instruction. And what’s better, teachers and students can snack on them when they'...

"Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate . . . the Red Sox, the Red Sox, hurrah!" Did a coach ever have you chant this classic appreciation out to the opposing team after a game? Besides being a very sportsmanlike gesture, this is also an example of a number sequence. These kinds of patterns ...

Introducing your students to the relationship between fractions, decimals, and percents, can be fun and educational. It's important that your students understand that fractions, decimals and percents are different numerical ways of representing the same thing. For example, 1/10 = 0.1 = 10%.  I've...

"Why do we have to learn this?" is a common question I get when it's time to teach students how to find the mean, median, mode, and range. That question is sometimes difficult to answer.  "You have to learn this because you'll be tested on it during the standardized tests this spring," is a reply...