Studying geometric transformations in music—a real-world application of mathematics—deepens students' understanding of the underlying principles.

While filling vases with water and observing volume and height relationships, students learn the fundamentals of functions.

Middle schoolers are not the easiest students to motivate. There are so many things going on in their lives that often school is valued more for its social opportunities than for its educational activities. Imagine the reactions of your students as they come into your room, hearing guitar music coming from the CD player on your desk. Better yet, imagine that they walk in to see you sitting on a tall stool at the front of the room, strumming a guitar. Either way, you have set the stage for an engaging lesson on ratio, proportion, and proportional reasoning.

Research indicates that teaching university mathematics courses via lecture is ineffective. The authors revamp a course that involved teaching volume and surface area to include hands-on manipulatives.

Activity 1: ReadingActivity 1 consists of two parts: oral reading and either silent reading or listening comprehension. Although the teacher should record word-attack and reading comprehension errors during this activity, the teacher should plan to analyze student reading performance at the conclusion of Activity 3, Session 1. Activity 1 should take approximately 10 minutes. ObjectivesAt the conclusion of this activity the teacher will 1. Identify the student's word-attack skills. 2. Identify the student's oral reading comprehension skills. 3. Identify the student's silent reading (or listening) comprehension skills.