Three seventh graders, working as a small group in their math class, had a conversation about adding and subtracting integers. The students discussed the challenges they faced in the assigned task.

In April 1994, NCTM published its first issue of Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School (MTMS). NCTM President Mary Lindquist welcomed us to this new publication stating, “A goal of NCTM is to make mathematics accessible to every student. This journal will help us focus on that goal by specifically addressing the needs of students at the middle level.” During the past twenty-five years, we have remained true to her vision of “expanded opportunities to exchange ideas and share approaches for improving mathematics education.”

Students move from slides, flips, and turns into reasoning about the characteristics of rigid transformations.

My name is Naima Goffney, and I am an eleven-year-old seventh grader at Julius West Middle School. I am taking algebra 1 this year. I wanted to write the Math for Real because in math class I do not always think that what we are learning is related to the real world. At home, my mom shows me all the different ways I am mathematically smart, which makes me want to try harder in school during the “rougher” days. We can use math to know more about how to improve our skills and find the math we learn in school more interesting and more related to our real world as middle schoolers.

Do you recall the formula for the surface area of a cylinder? How about the surface area of a cone? Did you find one of these formulas more difficult to recall than the other? I have observed a difference in our students' understanding of these two formulas, and this has motivated me to think about a more conceptually based approach to learning geometric formulas.

Surface area and volume are explored with this cartoon, also containing an activity sheet.

A monthly set of problems is aimed at a variety of ability levels.

In an eighth-grade classroom, the authors used the Connected Math Project curriculum and three essential components of an argument implied by Driscoll (1999) to adapt mathematical tasks to elicit written arguments that go beyond recounting steps.

Algebraic reasoning is often promoted through an analysis of and generalizations about patterns that appear in mathematics, in nature, or in everyday situations (Driscoll 1999; Kieran 2006; Lee 1996). In accordance with this tendency, the Common Core (CCSSI 2010) emphasizes finding patterns and expressing such regularity in repeated reasoning as an important mathematical practice. NCTM (2000) also recommends that students participate in patterning activities by asking them to describe numeric and geometric patterns; generalize patterns to predict what comes next while providing a rationale for their predictions; and represent patterns in multiple ways, including drawings, tables, symbols, and graphs.