Every child is different.  Our descriptions of how many or most children learn are not a guarantee of how every child thinks mathematically. The best way to find out what a child is thinking is to ask him or her! The Connection Mathematics for Elementary Teachers (CMET) Supplement attempts to provide general descriptions of children’s learning.   These examples are intended to help you understand how children approach mathematics differently than adults. By helping you connect children’s thinking to your own learning, we hope that this supplement will improve your understanding of both mathematics and children thereby enhancing your future teaching of mathematics to children.

Connecting Mathematics for Elementary Teachers (CMET) materials are designed to be a supplement for a variety of elementary mathematics education courses including content, methods, and graduate courses.  These materials have been designed to help you connect your own learning of mathematics with how children understand and learn mathematics.  In addition, the CMET Supplement attempts to show how children’s learning of mathematics in elementary school is connected to more advanced mathematics in middle and high school.  Consequently, this supplement primarily focuses on how children learn and understand mathematics and not on how to teach mathematics.  While this supplement is not designed to teach you how to teach mathematics to children, we believe that learning how children think mathematically will be helpful in your teaching of mathematics to children.