Call for Articles

The ComMuniCator seeks articles and activities on issues of interest to K–12 mathematics educators in California. The criteria for manuscript submission includes the following:

• The article/activity will be of interest to the members of the California Mathematics Council.
• The article/activity is innovative and not currently in widespread use in mathematics classrooms.
• The mathematics content is appropriate and accurate.
• If the article has been previously published, specific information about when and where the article was published is included.

The Editorial Review Panel will give priority to manuscripts related to the themes listed below, but will also consider articles on any facet of mathematics education.

Manuscripts should be word-processed, double spaced, although handwritten material will also be accepted. One copy of the manuscript should be submitted and the author’s full name, address, e-mail address, and work site should be included. Authors may also submit articles through e-mail, using word processing programs for the Macintosh or PC. Since readers may want to contact authors, authors should indicate whether or not the e-mail address can be published with the article.

We also welcome high-resolution digital photographs, original artwork, or examples of student work to accompany articles. Diagrams and figures should be drawn by computer if possible or neatly drawn in black ink. If submitting articles by e-mail, please scan photographs and send them as separate files (saved as tif, eps, or gif files). If submitting student work or pictures of students, be sure to include a statement that permissions from the students and their parents to use the student work or pictures is on file at the school. If manuscript includes references or a bibliography, please refer to the “Bibliography Format” used by CMC for the ComMuniCator(it is similar to what NCTM uses for its K–12 journals).

The editor reserves the right to edit manuscripts before they are published. Once an article or activity is published, it becomes the property of the California Mathematics Council, unless prior arrangements have been made with the editor.

Submit manuscripts to:

Crystal Davis
40485 Murrieta Hot Springs Suite B4 106
Murrieta, CA 92563
[email protected]

Themes for Future Issues

Themes have been chosen for the June 2020 and September 2020 issues of the ComMuniCator and articles and activities related to these themes are requested. Brief descriptions of the March 2020 and June 2020 themes are given below. The deadline for the June 2020 issue is March 13, 2020.

Information about how to submit a manuscript is given above and on the inside back cover of each issue of the ComMuniCator.

Statistics and Data Analysis

Data is all around us—on television, in newspapers, in magazines, and in most mathematics textbooks. Additionally, curiosity about a topic often leads us to gather our own data. How we accumulate, display, and analyze that information is the process of data analysis. Making conclusions and answering questions based on data is the related topic of inference, which is an extension of data analysis.

Younger students may use picture graphs, bar graphs, or line plots to organize and display information and answer related questions. They may also represent and interpret data.  Middle school students move on to topics such as median, mode, range, and graphs of histograms or box plots. They may also describe and summarize distributions, use random sampling and make inferences. The high school standards include the Statistics and Probability Conceptual Category, which includes topics such as box plots, scatter plots, interquartile range, standard deviation, normal deviation, two-way frequency tables, and correlation.

The ComMuniCator Editorial Panel is seeking articles that discuss the research and applications of statistics and data analysis, as well as student activities that may enhance student performance and understanding of statistics and data analysis. 

Facilitating Student Discourse in the Math Classroom

Mathematical Practice Standards 3 and 6 involve students being able to communicate concepts and their own understanding to others. Communication is a critical skill in the classroom, in the workplace, and interpersonal relationships.

In the classroom, students need to communicate their understanding of concepts in various ways - writing and speaking in pairs, in small groups, and in whole-class situations. They also need to be able to listen to others and understand different viewpoints.

How do teachers encourage this discourse in the mathematics classroom? What can teachers do to make their classroom a safe place so that students feel comfortable enough to take risks in communicating their ideas and listening to others? What activities empower them to expand their understanding enough to share their ideas with others?

Activities might include common error discussions, group projects with student-supervised gallery walks, presentations, Problem of the Week, assigned error analysis activities, etc. 

The ComMuniCator Editorial Panel is seeking articles and activities that help mathematics teachers develop discourse among their students. 

Numbers and Operations

Using Misconceptions in the Mathematics Classroom