The word "algorithm" is getting a lot of air time these days. Between references to "The Algorithm" used by YouTube, Facebook, or other social media and online entertainment platforms and "use the...
Tag: elemmath
Negative Talk and Absolutism: What Teachers Want You to Avoid, Part 2
The original source of the unmodified quote is hard to trace conclusively, but frequently winds back to the company Mathnasium, a tutoring franchise found in the US and Internationally. I recently...
Tricks and Algorithms: What Teachers Want You to Avoid, Part 1
I recently asked teachers what parents do that undermines their efforts to teach children math. Two main themes emerged: The damage of shortcutting mathematical practices and the language of negative...
Regrouping is a fundamental mathematics practice. Deep, early understanding of what's happening during regrouping will serve a student well in both math class and in daily life. But how do you...
The number 72 is frequently used to demonstrate deep mathematical structure. Not only does it have factors other than 1 and itself (it is composite, or not prime), it has quite a lot of them, and its...
The area model is one way of organizing our place-value calculations while completing a multi-step multiplication problem. Just like any other multiplication "method" or "algorithm," the area model...