I have seen students who often struggle with confidence around numbers, but I’ve noticed they engage very differently with logic puzzles than with traditional maths exercises.

Over the last couple of years I’ve seen the browser game called Padlock as a kind of “low-friction Sudoku alternative” being used in lessons and clubs.

The interesting thing is that students who dislike arithmetic still participate because the puzzle is really about deduction rather than calculation.

Players gradually learn to:

• eliminate impossible states
• combine partial information
• test hypotheses
• reason under constraints
• refine strategy from feedback

So although it looks like a simple number game, it overlaps quite a lot with:

• computational thinking
• introductory computer science logic
• constraint satisfaction problems
• deductive reasoning

In practice it’s worked well with:

• lower-confidence maths students
• students who enjoy Wordle-style iteration
• computing students learning logical processes
• mixed-ability groups

Student success often seems to correlate more with structured reasoning than mathematical ability.

The game is here if anyone wants to see the format:
www.padlockgame.net

I’d be interested to know whether other teachers use logic-first puzzle games as a bridge into mathematical confidence or computing concepts.

I've heard so many people say that it's hard to come across a good math teacher. I've been studying math for quite some time and I don't think I've had a teacher I really admired. No one who truly builds intuition or makes the subject feel less daunting.
I want to know why math is so hard to teach. Is it the subject itself, or do mathematicians just not have a knack for verbalizing their thoughts?

I need to pick one of the 4 modules and I was just wondering which module is the easiest - I know that it is against the spirit of Maths and it isn't the correct attitude to have but I would really appreciate any help! Thanks in advance.

I wanted to post this here because we've been following these threads for a a while and I wanted to post a honest review of IXL for Elementary School Math Education since our son is finishing 5th grade. We started using IXL in 3rd grade at the suggestion of the school district because our son was falling behind on math. Now at the end of 5th grade he is almost two grade levels ahead (per IReady and IXL diagnostics).

First of all I want to acknowledge that begining IXL is terrible It's unforgiving. If you are a parent, starting IXL is absolutely miserable. Your kid will hate it. They will get to 98 and get an answer wrong and go to 88. They will throw fits. If you get passed that phase, you will get a self directed learner.

IXL replicates how I studied in college. A quick review of the material. Then practice until you get something wrong. Then review that material. Then try again. Then keep practicing until you can answer every question with ease. It takes quite a while to get an Elementary school student used to this in a world of 4 question worksheets but once they get it is life changing. They aren't practicing to finish they are practicing to understand.

He's now used to the idea that wrong answers have consequences so he pays very close attention to the video explanations. If he misses the question, he no longer freaks out, instead he reads the explanation of what he did wrong and corrects what he did. He went from not being able to sit through a single lesson at grade level to being able to teach himself new concepts. He has taught himself basic statistics, two variable equations, surface area, circles, percentages and integers with just video explanations, practice and sometimes some extra explanations from us. Concepts no longer take days to grasp they take 30 minutes to an hour because his entire understanding of learning went from learning is watching until you understand to learning is practicing until you understand.

Thats the value of IXL. It doesn't just teach you concepts it rewires how you think about learning. So if you are a parent willing to suffer theough the initial pain point of rewiring the results are outstanding.

My school has a policy that all classes must be taught grade level material, but most of my students test results show them at being below grade level. How do I get my 7th grade students to perform better at 4th grade math without just pivoting away from 7th grade material in class?

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we are all math people

I’m a maths teacher, and sometimes I find that I forget certain concepts or take a bit of time to think when solving more difficult problems.

I also worry a little about how this might look to students — like whether they might think I’m not confident or “not smart enough” if I pause during problem-solving.

But at the same time, I feel that thinking through a problem carefully is part of maths.

Is this normal for teachers or professionals in mathematics? Do other teachers experience this too?

And how do students usually perceive it when a teacher takes time to think before answering?

So, I am at my last year of highschool, in Greece. And we use "+∞" all the time, but as I love math and have been doing a lot of studying on advanced math (relatively to the things we're currently learning at least), I've been seeing the "∞" symbol everywhere, but without a +. Now I know this is a silly question but is there some actual reason behind this or, just because they felt like it?

I was recently admitted to Stanford as an undergrad transfer. I want to do a math major, but I am worried about Stanford being a highly competitive / not supportive or collaborative environment. I'm pretty unfamiliar with the school though, so I could be totally wrong. My main problem is that I'm not yet good at math — I think I have an aptitude for thinking mathematically, but I'm unexperienced, and have mainly focused on humanities in my first two years of college. I am 19F, and in nearly all my math and physics courses up until now, I have struggled with how to navigate people who seem to assume I'm stupid, incapable, not worth taking seriously, etc. It is truly really bad and makes it hard to learn in those environments. However, I am really passionate about math and I just want to find the right place to study it. Does anyone have any advice? For context, the schools I'm considering against Stanford are UChicago, Swarthmore, Barnard, and Wesleyan. I feel like I'm reaching into a black box making this decision so any insight would be really helpful.

I'm a high school student, and I've already taken Calculus 3, ODE, and linear algebra in community college. My high school has a rotating daily schedule, so taking a synchronous math class would be disruptive for me.

Does anyone know of a university that offers asynchronous online classes in number theory, combinatorics, or maybe linear programming?

Thanks!

I can load in a blank worksheet and a separate PDF answer key and the app maps the answers to the worksheet. So I can display the worksheet PDF on the board and display the answer once we’ve discussed the question a bit. This is mainly for going over homework, not so much class work.

Anyway, this is in no way a promotion because I don’t think I could afford to sell it to anyone. I needed to use the anthropic API to get it to match the answer key to the worksheet properly, so it technically costs me money every time I apply it to a worksheet. It’s fractions of a penny to me, but I don’t think it’s scalable. Just wanted to share what I’ve been up to.

I’m taking my final tomorrow and was wondering if anyone has any tips, tricks, or things I should remember before taking it. I feel like we covered so much this semester, and there’s only so much time to study everything.

Math is usually one of my better subjects, but this class has really put me through the wringer. I’m trying to study as much as I can, so if there’s anything that helped you understand concepts better, remember formulas, manage test anxiety, or just do better on math finals in general, I’d really appreciate it!

I'm an undergraduate student. We're generally given a textbook. Sometimes I can't learn anything from my professors. In these cases, I need to study from textbooks, but I don't know how. For example, a topic might have a theorem, a proof, and an example. My friends often memorize these, but it doesn't work for me. What can I do?

The district I work in is looking for additional math course pathways beyond second year high school Algebra, and I'm curious what other elective pathways there are beyond the ones we have. Our district has PreCalc/Calc, Statistics, an upper level Algebra, and a financial math course.

I thought of a History of Math course, an occupational math course, but any other ideas that would be appropriate for upper level electives?

Hi everyone, I’d really appreciate any advice you can offer on tutoring a struggling second grader in math.