H E was the new reading teacher's greatest challenge-a sixth-grader reading at roughly the firstgrade level. Sometimes he acted out, but mostly he just daydreamed, talked, or slept while his classmates worked. No one, including his guardian, knew how to motivate him to want to succeed. As she was leaving the building one afternoon, the teacher happened upon a rambunctious game of basketball. She entered the nearly empty gym, sat in the bleachers, and immediately noticed the boy playing with his team. She returned his frantic wave. As the game drew to a close, he dashed up to her, and they launched into an excited conversation about the game. After that, she made a point of going to almost every practice for the rest of the season. There, she would often study the coach, focusing on how attentive the team was to him. They responded to his intensity, his knowledge of the game and the players, his planning, and his single-minded commitment to winning. Taking this cue, she set a small number of attainable short-and long-term classroom goals for the boy,

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To support mathematical investigations, use this framework to guide students in constructing art-based and technology-based literature.

Using stories in mathematics helps students situate mathematics within a context. This chapter presents an activity for the integration of stories and word problems into an algebra course designed for pre-service teachers. The pre-service teachers designed and created stories using technology (digital cameras and PowerPoint) to support algebraic explorations at the elementary and secondary levels based on the Common Core Standards. A balance of technology, language arts, and mathematics content is possible with these stories. The activity can be extended beyond the university classroom by guiding secondary students in creating their own algebraic stories in the classroom.