Mathematics Projects Promote Students' Algebraic Thinking

Teachers in all curricular areas, especially science, have encouraged students to develop projects to extend their knowledge of specific phenomena. As middle school mathematics teachers grapple with methods to help students enhance algebraic thinking, they should consider the power of the mathematics project. My experiences with students have demonstrated that mathematics projects must be structured as investigations in which students work cooperatively and where the mathematics in the proj-ects is substantial. Projects can provide middle school students with the opportunity to investigate, conjecture, and reach mathematical conclusions that require algebraic thinking, as recommended in the NCTM's Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (1989). This article describes how various projects helped middle school students harness their experiences and construct mathematical conclusions through algebraic thinking Students employed algebraic thinking as they used number patterns and verbal rules to “explore the interrelationships of these representations” (NCTM 1989, 102) and reach conclusions in their projects.