Barbie caught a lot of flack back in the ’90s for declaring, “Math class is tough!” Today we find ourselves in the disorienting position of defending her. We recently got a note from an anonymous ...

A key part—though surely not the only part—of early-grades math is ensuring students get the basic arithmetic functions down and, beyond that, making sure they’re able to swiftly and automatically ...

When I was a kid learning arithmetic the only visual aid I remember is flash cards. These were useful for memorizing single-digit addition and multiplication, but is memorization really the best ...

The old way to multiply required a student to add the products of 36 x 4 and 36 x 2. The trick is to add that 0 at the end of the second product. Your fifth-grader asks you for help with the day's ...

When my children were in grade school, I never let them do their math homework with calculators. They had to work out the numbers in their head or with pencil and paper. I kept thinking about my ...

Bundle the ones to make 10. Moving left on the number line. Skip counting. Gone are the days of rote memorization, constant addition and subtraction drills and learning long division before you knew ...