Math Education Articles for Teachers

When you spend as many years in the classroom as I did, you see lots of innovative ideas come and go; some good and some not so good. I think this is especially true in the field of mathematics. When I first started teaching, the only writing required in high school math courses was the “le...

There is a world of creativity that can be employed with something as simple as a cube and a rectangular prism. Have your class work intimately with the concepts of surface area and volume as they create Zarcon-proof homes, which are protected from deadly rays by aluminum foil. To construct these...

The algorithm for multiplying fractions is easy, especially if you’ve already covered adding and subtracting fractions, which presumably has exposed your kids to lots of practice with reducing and the idea of simplest form. However, the concept of what is actually happening when y...

Origami is a beautiful art form that can facilitate a variety of concepts. It was first developed by the Chinese, who also happened to develop paper. It is said that traveling monks brought both the art form and the paper to Japan. It was a hit! Japanese royalty took to folding paper as an expens...

When teachers reveal a human element of mathematics, it can become a more interesting subject to learn about. One way this can be done is by focusing on the lives of mathematicians. When students discover the person behind the math, they will find math more memorable. Maria Gaetana Agnesi is a ma...

The term imaginary number often perplexes people because they incorrectly suppose that these numbers are not possible to compute. People puzzle over imaginary numbers, as a term, because they cannot readily conceive of how to calculate the square root of a negative number. In fact, when imaginary...

As educators, many of us are aware that some students will enter the classroom loathing mathematics. Although studying calculus and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs may not have prepared you as a top-notch celebrity entertainer to sustain interest at all times, there are strategies you can try to brea...

Schools, universities, student groups, and interested individuals will be joining forces to celebrate Mathematics Awareness Month this April. History of Mathematics Awareness Month This annual tribute to numbers officially began in 1986 when President Ronald Reagan issued a proclamation for Na...

Each year my students struggle to grasp all of the ways we measure time. It’s understandable when you consider the many exceptions to the rules. Take, for example, the months on the calendar. Thirty days or thirty-one? And then there’s February. Adopting daylight saving time is optional. The mili...

Somewhere along the way, certain groups of people seem to accept the belief that they are not as good at math as others. While it may be true that individuals have different academic strengths, often the reason lies not in aptitude, but in attitude. As educators, we can work to dispel the myths s...

High school precalculus is meant to be an intermediary step to what is largely viewed as the most pressing mathematical challenge - calculus. All high school students should be made aware that calculus is a required course for many careers including engineering, medicine, and business. Consequent...

When I took calculus as an undergraduate, it was presented in a huge lecture hall with hundreds of students and I was well aware that it was known as a “weeder” class for engineers, Pre-Med, and other science majors. I distinctly remember always feeling like calculus was a subject with nu...

For students, as well as the general populous, math and economics are often intangibly linked. However, sometimes the connection between the two disciplines is concrete and clear. Consider the current pervasive socio-economic unrest. The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Movement is attractive to our yout...

When teaching students higher–level math skills, it’s important to make sure that they fully understand the concepts. For example, students commonly mix up the terms correlation and causation. If you give students real-world examples, you can make sure they understand the difference between these...

One of the more memorable things about my elementary school education was Fridays in third grade. We met with another class and played math games. The teacher would read off a math problem, and two students would race to the chalkboard to write the answer. Although I usually lost, I still loved g...