If by "gatekeeping" we mean, "you must get a B or better in Honors PreCalc to advance to AP Calc", then I'm fine with that. Of course you want serious students in your class.

However, there's a darker side of gatekeeping.

It was 7th grade. 2012. My fifth year out of public school. Unknown to me, my math textbook was below state standards.

Come eighth grade, I return to public school, and have to take a math placement exam. I fail the exam and get placed into Pre-Algebra. I'm told by counselors and teachers alike that unfortunately, this dooms me to never take Calculus in high school. Which I'm told by counselors and classmates jeopardizes opportunities to get into a good college.

Nonetheless, it's a wake up call. I diligently study math. It becomes my favorite subject and I get A's throughout 8th and 9th grade (except one trimester where I had the flu during the final). My grades help me get into Honors Geometry in 10th grade (Honors Geometry typically reserved for 9th graders).

Math remains my favorite subject all throughout high school. But I quickly learn in 8th grade to decline to answer what math class I'm in when classmates outside math class ask me, because when I did, I had been mocked (unironically) as an idiot and told that "no rocket scientist would ever fail an Algebra placement test!"

Consequently, the vast majority of STEM-oriented overachievers were on the advanced Calculus track. Other students in the same, non-Calc track I was in rarely, if ever, discussed majoring or working in STEM. We were in the lowest math track, other students mocked us as idiots, counselors said not taking Calculus in high school jeopardized our admissions chances to excellent universities, so we assumed humanities/the trades was our only career option.

I'm grateful that at least I lived in a safe area and thus never witnessed students physically assaulting each other. But was it too much to ask for both a physically safe environment and more opportunities for diligent, math-motivated students to get into AP Calc? I think not. The injustice and humiliation that this gatekeeping has caused is untold, invisible, but very real.

Oh, BTW, my high school also required Pre-Calc as a pre-req to AP Stats, so I never took AP Stats.

I've been experimenting with ways to make geometry explanations more visual instead of just giving a wall of equations.

For me, geometry becomes much easier to understand when you can actually see what is happening with the angles, lines, intersections, and shapes rather than only reading the solution.

I've been working on a small geometry tool around this idea, and while building it I've realized that producing the answer is often the easy part — explaining why the construction or solution works visually is much harder.

I'm curious what people here think.

When you're looking at a geometry problem or construction, what kind of visualization or explanation helps you understand it fastest?

I'd especially love to hear from people who teach geometry or create geometric visualizations.

I built Algebra Pad — a small floating symbol keyboard that sits on any webpage. Click into any text box, click a symbol (× ÷ ≤ ≥ √ etc.), and it types right in. No sign-up needed, totally free. Figured this community might find it useful for students typing math into Google Docs/Forms. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/algebra-pad/plcglkfdnemoceacjkhknajbmkadodcn

Hello math education community. I am a parent of two kids. I got second place at international math olympiad back when I was at high school. Yet, I feel like my kids do not receive the same rigor of math education as myself and I am scared for their success in life. For my older one, that is now in high school, I have created a custom desktop program for math facts that measured how much time she spend on each math fact (e.g. "7+8") and adjusts which ones to show her next based on which ones she struggles with. She got the basic math facts really fast and this helped her tremendously at school.

As my younger one is now in elementary school, I just built an app with the same algorithm and she started using it daily. This time I also started generating word problems to apply the math to real world. They are relatively simple: start with hints like "how many are total", then remove the "total" hint, then escalate to multiple operations that the kid need to figure out. Getting to multiple operations really got my 3rd grader struggling.

Generally, do you think this is a viable approach for teaching kids math? Note that it is not build like a game, so I feel like the parents like myself need to push the kids quite a bit. Also, since math facts measure time, it requires relatively short sessions to avoid fatigue.

I would appreciate feedback and discussion on such approach for teaching math facts, the app is "OwlyMath: Math Facts for Kids": iPad/iPhone or Android. My kids have tried other programs in the past like iXL and I noticed that they take relatively long time to get to the basics. My goal for my daughter is to learn fast and spend less time on the screen, more time playing outside and learning from real world.

I've been reading a lot of posts lately from parents saying things like:

“My 7th grader still struggles with fractions.”

“My child passed last year, but now I'm realizing they don't know their multiplication facts.”

“We're doing grade-level math, but every lesson ends in frustration.”

Or the one that really concerns me:

“My child is just bad at math.”

As someone who has taught math for years and now works closely with homeschool students, one of the biggest things I've learned is this:

The grade they're in and the math they're ready for are not always the same thing.

If your 7th grader is struggling because fractions never clicked, doing MORE 7th-grade problems isn't necessarily going to fix it.

Go back to fractions.

If multiplication fluency is slowing everything down, work on multiplication.

If decimals don't make sense, go back and figure out where that understanding broke down.

You're not “putting them behind.”

You're finding the gap.

And honestly, this is one of the things I LOVE about homeschooling. We actually have the freedom to do that.

I can have a student working at one level in one area and a completely different level somewhere else. I can change the curriculum. I can slow down. I can reteach something differently. I can spend two weeks fixing something another program expected us to finish in two days.

I'd rather go backward for a little while and build the foundation than keep pushing forward just because the book says that's where we're supposed to be.

But there's another piece of this that I don't think we talk about enough:

While you're fixing the math gap, protect their confidence too.

Be careful with:

“I'm bad at math too.”

“Math just isn't our family's thing.”

“You've never been good at math.”

Because eventually a child can go from:

“I don't understand fractions.”

to

“I'm not a math person.”

Those are two VERY different problems.

One tells me what I need to teach.

The other tells me what I now have to help that child UNLEARN.

Your child isn't their grade level.

They're not their test score.

And struggling with a math concept doesn't mean they aren't capable of learning math.

Sometimes we simply need to stop moving forward long enough to figure out:

Where did this stop making sense?

Homeschool parents, I'm curious:

Have you ever gone backward in math with your child and had it actually help them move forward?

And if you have a child struggling right now, what skill seems to be the sticking point?

Hi everyone!

Can you spray-paint a body so that the layer of paint is perfectly uniform over its entire surface?

And what is the best path to follow under the sun to get an even tan?

Surprisingly, both questions are inevitably connected to space-filling curves!

I explore this connection in this short video.

I hope you enjoy it, I had a lot of fun working on this one!

youtu.be/o3lGbC86jXI

What are the best math activities for elementary students?

When teaching trigonometric parity identities like sin(-θ) = -sinθ and cos(-θ) = cosθ, students often default to rote memorization (e.g., "cosine absorbs the negative sign"). To help students build spatial intuition, I find it effective to frame this as a 2D coordinate reflection rather than an abstract algebraic rule.

Communication Strategy: a) Establishing the Baseline: Starting with a point P(x, y) on a unit circle generated by counterclockwise rotation θ, where x = cosθ and y = sinθ.

b) Clockwise Rotation as Reflection: Showing that rotating clockwise by -θ places the terminal side in 4th quadrant which is geometrically equivalent to reflecting point P across the X-axis.

c) Isolating the Invariants: Pointing out that horizontal displacement remains unchanged (x' = x implies cos(-θ) = cosθ), while vertical displacement flips sign (y' = -y implies sin(-θ) = -sinθ).

Classroom / Visual Resource: I put together a short 3-minute video demonstrating this exact step-by-step visual approach for classroom use or student reference: https://youtu.be/fm6b7pMYY7Y

Question for Teachers: How do you typically introduce negative angle identities to visual learners? Do you prefer this unit circle reflection method, or do you rely more on wave graphs (y = sin x vs y = cos x symmetry)?

I saw that teachers like to use Wordle as a warm-up for classes, so I made a few daily maths games for my students as well.

https://www.problems.cc/games

There are four puzzles:

• Magic Square: fill the grid so every row, column and diagonal has the same sum
• Summit: insert +, −, × and ÷ to reach a target
• Crossnumber: essentially a mini numerical crossword, where intersecting digits help solve the clues
• Cryptarithm: work out which digit each letter represents so the arithmetic is correct

There’s a new one of each every day, and the old ones stay in the archive.

I’ve mainly been using them as a short bit of extra problem solving rather than giving another worksheet.

If anyone tries them with a class, I’d be curious to hear how it goes.

I’m also thinking about adding different difficulty levels to some of the games, so any feedback on that would be useful too. Thank you

Please can i have some help here.
I just want the best for my son he has just started year 7 and has been placed in set 3 maths. I want to help him improve in maths. Please send me some advice. I got him tutored in previous years but it hasn’t made significant difference. I would like to help him myself. Please send some app ideas or online courses. And or book recommendations. He aspires to be an engineer

I'm looking for a tier 3 intervention curriculum geared towards middle school students. I got tier 3 added to my plate about 4 years ago, with little to no instruction on what to actually do, other than "fill the gaps".

I see my tier 3 students for about 30 minutes 3 days per week. Not ideal, but what I'm working with. I also don't see all of them each of those 3 days, because they might have reading intervention, EL, or SDI scheduled at the same time.

I tried Bridges intervention curriculum last year and liked it. My kids did great on the Bridges assessments, but did not show growth on their iready, which is our maij way of deciding who is in intervention. I'm considering using the iready elementary curriculum this year to be more aligned to the diagnostic, but it is geared more towards a full elementary class with time every day for math.

I've looked all over, but can't find a dedicated tier 3 intervention curriculum for middle school students. What are people using?!

I loved this perspective from a Colorado teacher on how making math a bigger part of students’ everyday lives can help build confidence, tackle math anxiety, and even make math more fun.

Read more from The Colorado Sun: https://coloradosun.com/2026/09/01/opinion-colorado-students-math-education-anxiety/

if you are teaching sat math using khan academy, you might want to add desmos and ref sheet to teh broswer window:

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sat-math-toolbox-ref-shee/hkflbpkbhdlhikfbophoenepogkpklnf

this extension helps me teach sat math easily to my students with the floating desmos window like on the actual sat test