Virginia Mathematics Teacher Spring 2017

Table of Contents:

Note from the Editor..................................................5

HEXA Challenge.....................................................38

Message from the President .....................................6

Information for Virginia’s K-5 Teachers................40

Note from the VDOE.................................................7

Grant Opportunities................................................40

The Role of Skip Counting and Figurative Reasoning................................................8 Is the Midpoint Quadrilateral Really a Parallelogram?........................................................15 Algebra Achievement of Urban High School Students...................................18

PISA Updates...........................................................41

Polling Data and the 2016 Presidential Election ...42

Math Girls ...................................................................46

Busting Block Busters!............................................48

Exploring the Solving of Algebraic Equations Through Mental Algebra ........................................49

Solutions to Fall HEXA Challenge Problems ........23

Recursion in Secondary Mathematics Classrooms.53

Upcoming Math Competitions.................................27

Summer 2016 STEM Camps....................................56

Concrete, Representational, and Abstract: Building Fluency from Conceptual Understanding...............28

Math Jokes...............................................................56

The Puzzlemaker .....................................................59

Technology Review..................................................32

Conferences of Interest ...........................................60

Good Reads.............................................................34

Key to the Fall 2016 Puzzlemaker Problem............35

Call for Manuscripts................................................36

Educational Opportunities for Virginia Mathematics Teachers.............................................37

Virginia Mathematics Teacher vol. 43, no. 2

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