Hurricane-based mathematics tasks involving cooperative learning that were found to help students enhance their understanding of patterns, graphs, and rates of change. The tasks created for this activity have been used by both middle and high school teachers and students. Interdisciplinary themes are prominent as students need a working knowledge of longitude and latitude. Activity sheets, answers, and student work included.

Describes middle school students' understanding of the equal sign and the relationship between their understanding and performance when solving algebraic equations. Students are given prompts about the meaning and how they understand the equal sign; these results are highlighted. Improving students' understanding of the equal sign and their preparation for algebra may require changes in instructional practices and middle school mathematics curricula.

This investigation requires students to make connections to the Pythagorean theorem, congruence, and combinations by exploring segment lengths on a geoboard. Its use of visual representation and a range of mathematical ideas makes this task accessible to learners with varied levels of prior knowledge. In this activity, the use of multiple representations allows for greater access to mathematical ideas. Activity sheet and student samples included.

The various ways fractions are divided and why students need to learn about fractions through dividing them. Some Chinese perspectives may be insightful to problem-solving and working flexibly with fractions; Chinese students are expected to learn more than just the computational rule for fraction division. Several problems are presented.

Classified index of authors and subjects for Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, Vol. 13, August 2007–May 2008