When I was a new teacher, I wanted my students to see math not just as numbers and equations but as a tool to understand the world around them. My goal wasn’t for them to simply memorize formulas to ...

By explicitly modeling each step of a problem and gradually fading away supports, teachers can give students a clear path to mastering new content.

Students often struggle to connect math with the real world. Word problems—a combination of words, numbers, and mathematical operations—can be a perfect vehicle to take abstract numbers off the page.

Alan Veliz-Cuba has received funding from the Simons Foundation and the American Mathematical Society for some of his research. You can probably think of a time when you’ve used math to solve an ...