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With an increased focus on the importance of teaching mathematics throughout the education system in the United States, the discovery of this fine online collection of resources is most welcome. Developed by the Mathematical Association of America.

"Every mathematics teacher I know needs graph paper. If you're a mathematics teacher and find yourself running short on graph paper or you need a graph paper that is different from what your school purchases, try one of these four places for printing graph paper." T/h R Byrne

"The Let's Think project draws on over 25 years of research by academics and teacher practitioners. It offers a fresh approach to teaching English, Mathematics, Science (and other subjects) that has a proven impact on students' development as thinkers. Let's Think has several published resources from Foundation Stage to KS3 in a range of curriculum areas."

In this TED talk, Andreas Schleicher describes a new scale, "PISA (the Programme for International Student Assessment), an initiative of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). PISA not only tests students on their mathematical understanding, reading level and ability to apply learning to new problems, but also looks at what teachers get paid, how long the school day is, what the average class size is and whether quality of education is uniform across schools and social stratifications. It even measures cultural attitudes, like whether people in the country expect all students to achieve or only a small segment of them to. It's this broad approach to data collection that makes PISA so powerful, says Schleicher." An interesting way for a country to compare where it is and how it compares globally.

Holding oneself in a "state of questioning" may be a desirable outcome of learning, as well as a process for learning. For example, "adaptive software that leads students through English/language arts or mathematics on a pace set by their own abilities fails to force students to ask questions about that material, contextualize it in real life, or communicate about the concepts with others, Lehmann said. The same is true of collaborative projects where restrictive guidelines result in several, nearly-identical finished products across student groups. "In a true inquiry-based model, how learning happens isn't as important as whether that learning encourages students to try to learn even more. Lehmann compared the scenario to the plight of a two-year-old child who has graduated from 'yes' and 'no' and proceeded onto an endless string of 'why's.' "'To me it comes down to process,'" Lehmann said. 'Inquiry means living in the soup. Inquiry means living in that uncomfortable space where we don't know the answer.'"

"Free mathematics software for learning and teaching " - downloadable

"What if classroom learning was a little more active? Would university instruction be more effective if students spent some of their class time on active forms of learning like activities, discussions, or group work, instead of spending all of their class time listening? "A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences addressed this question by conducting the largest and most comprehensive review of the effect of active learning on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education. Their answer is a resounding yes. According to Scott Freeman, one of the authors of the new study, "The impact of these data should be like the Surgeon General's report on "Smoking and Health" in 1964-they should put to rest any debate about whether active learning is more effective than lecturing."" This is great news for teachers of EFL/ESL also.

"Thinking Blocks is a nice site for elementary and middle school mathematics teachers. Thinking Blocks provides interactive templates in which students use brightly colored blocks to model and solve problems. As students work through the problems they are provided with feedback as to whether or not they are using the correct sequence to solve each problem. There are templates and problems for addition, multiplication, fractions, and ratios. You can also develop your own problems using the modeling tool." T/H to R. Byrne

Interactive tutoring and learning tools and exercises for maths, US grades 3-12 (late elementary through high school). ALso sponsors teacher development courses (fee-based). --Elizabeth Hanson-Smith