According to a recent in-depth research review I conducted of over 150 top math apps for young children, there are three apps that all 3 to 5 year-old children should have access to. These apps are much more than cool graphics and fun rewards. They are pedagogically sound, contain robust experiences with content, and will hold your young learner’s attention. Kids will be begging to play them over and over again.

Multiplication is a wondrous thing, unless you’re the child who only gets through the first row of problems on your time-test while your classmates finish the whole sheet. In my class this child was Andrew. I knew he was learning, but it didn’t show on the timed-tests. I was confused, looking for answers, and wanted Andrew to succeed. As I searched the research I found out something startling. I hadn’t been teaching multiplication. I had been testing it. That’s went I set out to make multiplication meaningful in my classroom.

As teachers, we all know the feelings of hope and anticipation that surface the day before school begins for a new year. The desks are ready, the pencils are sharpened, and if you're an elementary teacher your room is most likely newly decorated. We all begin with the resolve that this year, will be better than any before. However, all too soon it's October and we've somehow fallen back into the same habits and ruts as last year.

Do they think you even LIKE math? All too often negative attitudes about mathematics start with the negative feelings teachers (and other influential adults) pass on to their young students. As a mathematics methods teacher at a university I am well aware of how pervasive and even debilitating these attitudes can be. Students who enter my classroom as college seniors are not afraid to express their fear of a course syllabus that includes division of fractions and alternative algorithms. In fact, my own fear of mathematics as a college student and an elementary classroom teacher is what eventually led me to my field of study. I was determined that my students would have a more positive experience with math than I did. Learning to love math as a teacher, and in turn teaching your students to love math, often means rethinking math instruction as you’ve always seen it. Students pick-up on...

The Deseret News recently featured the Mathematics Teachers Academy in a teachers professional development article. The reporter interviewed one of our very first students – Cathe Runyan from Grouse Creek, Utah. It's interesting to read how Cathe has been able to receive professional development despite living in a rural town hundreds of miles away from a university or major town.