“Begin with the end in mind,” says Stephen Covey (Habit 2). Since every student these days must master—or at least survive—Algebra to get a high school diploma and since most colleges require incoming freshmen to know Algebra 2 or better, we should keep that goal in mind as we plan students’ curricular trajectories in K-12 mathematics.
School mathematics is the distillation of more than two millennia of human progress. Getting that across in the thirteen years of K-12 is a big order; but it’s do-able if we plan ahead and don’t waste students’ time on activities and approaches that won’t prepare them for success in Algebra and beyond.
This site is dedicated to helping you (you are probably a teacher, but you might be a parent, student, even a person!) get the mathematical attitude into your heart, the content knowledge into your head, and the pedagogical activities into your toolbox so that you can help students make it safe and sound to Algebra and beyond.
The large graphic on the main page, “Understanding Mathematics”, is my adaptation of Richard Lesh’s translation model.
I have a more casual site, with a blog and whatnot, at larrythemathguy.com.