Secondary Education and Teaching Commons^™

Implementing Common Core State Standards For Mathematics Through Lesson Study, John Thomas Hall

Honors Program Projects

The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) represent the beginning of a new era in American education. For the first time, a majority of states are sharing expectations for student knowledge in mathematics. While standards cannot change education, the means by which these standards are implemented contribute to the mathematical achievement of students. For instance, the CCSSM incorporate separate content and practice standards for students. Content standards are familiar to most educators, but the expectation of developing mathematical skills highlighted in the practice standards will require changes to lesson preparation and teaching.

In an effort to provide pre-service and …

What Is So Negative About Negative Exponents?, Geoffrey D. Dietz

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

While teaching college-level mathematics (from College Algebra to Calculus to Abstract Algebra), I have observed that students are often uncomfortable using negative exponents in calculations. I believe the fault partially lies in the manner in which negative exponents are taught in Algebra 1 or Algebra 2 courses, especially in rigid instructions always to write answers using only positive exponents. After reviewing a sample of algebra texts used in the United States over the last two centuries, it appears that while attitudes toward negative exponents have varied from author to author over time, the current trend is to declare explicitly that …

Assessing U.S. High School Mathematics Students' Dependency On Calculators For Basic Arithmetic Operations Involving Integers From Single-Digit Fact Families, John Jeremy Sneed

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study was designed to investigate the extent to which high school students use calculators to perform basic operations, and how well they actually perform those same operations without using calculators. The investigation involved the testing of math classes of students--male and female, mixed ethnicities--in grades nine through twelve. Students were asked to perform all four basic math operations (add, subtract, multiply, divide) involving integers based on single-digit addition and multiplication fact families with and without calculators. The testing was in two environments--timed and untimed, with students recording their completion times--in order to investigate discrepancies in students' calculator use in …