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In Elementary School, Many Teachers Have a Shaky Grasp of Math. Can Preparation Programs Change That?

ED Surge

Now, a new report suggests that teacher preparation programs underemphasize math instruction at the elementary school level. But many elementary school teachers are uncomfortable with math in a way that can pass on to students. The report gave Fs to 84 percent of the graduate programs preparing elementary school teachers for math.

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Art Saved My Life When I Was a Student. Now, It's Helping My Multilingual Learners.

ED Surge

Earlier this month at Truesdell Elementary, in the last five minutes of one of my classes, I called for my students' attention. I remember sitting in my math and science classes next to the only other Spanish-speaking student, tasked with translating complex scientific terms and algebraic formulasan impossible burden for any sixth-grader.

educators

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Could Play Boost Students’ Math Performance?

ED Surge

Mostly an administrator these days, Fisher still teaches honors algebra at Breakwater, a pre-K-8th independent school in Portland, Maine. These days, almost every math curriculum in early childhood and elementary school includes games, usually a board or dice game, says Yvonne Liu-Constant, a practitioner specialist for Project Zero.

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Are Students’ Math Futures Being Unwittingly Set By Tracking?

ED Surge

When Pierrce Holmes entered ninth grade, his school put him in 9C, a lower-level algebra class. He was switched over to the more advanced class, which taught algebra II and geometry. For example, lots of principals say that their school offers algebra, a critical juncture in the race to calculus. Oh, do you want to try? “Oh,

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Math Instruction Isn’t Working. Could Better Teacher Training Help?

ED Surge

Since math classes progress in a mostly linear way, students have to get fractions to set them up for algebra; and how they do in algebra will likely influence whether they even get to try for advanced courses like calculus, a traditional weed-out metric for lucrative science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers.

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The Top 7 Elements of a Highly Effective Math Class

Accelerate Learning

Of course, this principle gets more complex as students age, and math instruction in elementary school looks different than in high school.

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We Need More Math Teachers. Here’s How to Prepare Them for Life in the Classroom.

ED Surge

During the day, I teach Algebra I classes to high school freshmen in Springfield, Missouri. One night per week, I teach preservice elementary school teachers who serve as paraprofessionals at K-12 schools in Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama and California through Reach University.

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