Over the past year, since I took over the common-core math beat, I’ve been thinking a lot about fractions. As I wrote in November, the Common Core State Standards for mathematics emphasize fractions ...

Important update, Jan. 17 at 18:00 UTC: There have been a lot of objections raised about the video mentioned below and the way I describe the math therein. It’s more than I can simply add or update ...

Many children never master fractions. When asked whether 12/13 + 7/8 was closest to 1, 2, 19, or 21, only 24% of a nationally representative sample of more than 20,000 US 8th graders answered ...

Want to learn more? Sign up for a free five-week email mini-course full of research-backed strategies to help students make sense of math. Fractions are an important building block in students’ ...

The same method is used for adding / subtracting both numerical fractions and algebraic fractions. Find a common denominator Write each fraction as an equivalent fraction with the common denominator ...

On the road to algebra, children must learn a weird idea: that numbers can be smaller than zero (negative) and can be mixed with numbers greater than zero (positive) in an equation. Now researchers at ...