Elementary

Classroom Learning Partner (CLP) tools allow students and teachers to create, annotate, and manipulate visual representations to solve math problems. The tools may be used for a number of mathematical purposes, but were mainly conceived to assist in creating visual representations for multiplication and division. The underlying model of multiplication and division assumed by the current set of tools involves a repetition of groups of the same size.

Classroom Learning Partner (CLP) tools allow students and teachers to create, annotate, and manipulate visual representations to solve math problems. The tools may be used for a number of mathematical purposes, but were mainly conceived to assist in creating visual representations for multiplication and division. The underlying model of multiplication and division assumed by the current set of tools involves a repetition of groups of the same size.

Much of the literature on science teaching suggests that elementary teachers lack relevant prior experiences with science. This study begins to reframe the deficit approach to research in science teaching by privileging the experiences elementary teachers have had with science – both in and out of schools – throughout their lives. Our work uses identity as a lens to examine the complexities of elementary teachers’ narrative accounts of their experiences with science over the course of their lives.

Science education stakeholders worldwide are engaged in efforts to support teachers' noticing and making sense of students' thinking in science. Here we introduce the design of a science teaching video club and present a study of its implementation. The current design extends prior research on video clubs as a form of professional development for supporting mathematics teachers. Results indicate that the current design supported science teachers in noticing and discussing students' thinking in sustained and meaningful ways.

Building on the work of teacher noticing, this study investigated teachers’ noticing of students’ thinking evident in artifacts from their science teaching context. Prior work on teachers’ noticing in

Smith, J. P., & Barrett, J. E. (2017). The learning and teaching of measurement: Coordinating quantity and number. In J. Cai (Ed.), Compendium for research in mathematics education (pp. 355–385). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Quantitative reasoning and measurement competencies support the development of mathematical and scientific thinking in children in the early and middle grades and are fundamental to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. The sixteenth Journal for Research in Mathematics Education (JRME) monograph is a report on a four-year-long multisite longitudinal study that studied children’s thinking and learning about geometric measurement (i.e., length, area, and volume).

This chapter focuses on the design of simulation assessments to learn about pre-service teachers’ capabilities with eliciting and interpreting student thinking. We present a simulation assessment and show what a performance on that assessment can reveal about a pre-service teacher’s eliciting and interpreting skills, as well as their mathematical knowledge for teaching. We consider the specific design features that make it possible to appraise pre-service teachers’ capabilities.

This column provides ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching. This month’s issue discusses using the 5E learning cycle to create coherent storylines.

Lipsitz, K., Cisterna, D., & Hanuscin, D. (2017). The 5E Learning Cycle: What’s the story? Science and Children, 55(4), 76–80.