Wearing a chef's hat and kneading a ball of dough, Toliver asked her students to design their own pies on crusts of construction paper. Students were then asked to swap slices of pizza with one another. The swap helped them visualize and appreciate the difference between increments. She believes that kids need to be making, seeing, and touching. Where we are all going to get rich and divide the money evenly.
People have no trouble saying that about math, though.
Bigner says that some people feel that students just do not need to know algebra. They think that saying every person who graduates from high school must be prepared for higher education, whether they are going or not, makes as much sense as saying that every graduating student must be prepared for entering the military. The obstacles for teaching algebra to all students are frustrating, says Bigner. We don't wake up thinking 'let's see how many kids I can fail today' but that's what we end up doing daily. He listed some of the difficulties that teacher face.