That said, I haven’t figured out any good way to remedy the situation. Elementary school teachers have a wide range of topics and subjects to teach and can’t be experts on them all. So they/we often rely on a math textbook rather than having to really understand the concepts.

Yeah. That’s helpful. Who tells them this stuff? Bow-tie method?

Isn’t there some better word to use than “cross” anything? My kids always confuse cross canceling for cross multiplying, which are two almost opposite actions.

I use a dark background with light text. I add a slight gradient to mimic the effect of overhead lighting on the rest of the walls. The hope is that it causes less dissonance with the rest of the room, but I’m probably just blowing hot air.

It’s also a default template built by others (quite often), so it’s an easy grab, hence my curiosity as to why it works for you when you have a field of pre-built options and also have the ability to push well beyond what most can do…and what it implies from your design-centric eye.

Just curious. Truly.

FWIW: Trees and forest are pretty vital in each other’s world. Hard to swing an ax or rope/tire at one without grabbing the other in the process.

Incidentally, I re-uploaded the graphic to better illustrate my point and uploaded a couple more to show how small choices with a) lines and b) alignment can each make math much clearer.

When I work with my students, I make sure that the font has a thicker line to it so they really, really, cannot help but catch the color.

Two off-topic questions oh Dan, master of all math teaching:

(1) Can I use the division symbol on solution sets for high school work? I’ve been having trouble finding a way to indicate that the line above the fraction bar was, in fact, the reduced form of the earlier operation.

(2) My chemistry students don’t learn (or re-learn in a “it sticks now way) how to get x out of the denominator until about third quarter in Algebra 2, yet I need them to be able to solve for the volume in a density equation (D=m/v) in the first unit of Chemistry. If you have any tips on how I can teach it so that it sticks, please, please email me. Oh, and other commentators, feel free to help me as well. I think this is one of those math-teacher tricks that I’d love to be privy to.