CAUGHT ON TAPE To help his students who have trouble understanding math concepts, Chicago sixth-grade teacher Philip Miliano has found success using videos featuring their classmates. After he teaches a concept, such as adding fractions with unlike denominators, he videotapes a student explaining the same concept and using an example. The video is downloaded to the classroom computers, where students who don’t understand the concept can watch the video as many times as they need. He also makes a Spanish version of each math concept.

DEAR CLASS Whenever Alice Reyes has a substitute teacher for her eighth-grade English class in Clifton Park, N.Y., she writes plans for the sub in the form of a letter to her students. The letter includes information about plans for the day, reminders to individual students, tasks that selected students are supposed to do that day and reminders about what they are not allowed to do. The letter also includes asides to the substitute—not to be read to the whole class. She says the sub and the class both enjoy the letters.

HOW MANY PENNIES? Each week during the third and fourth quarter of the year, seventh-grade teacher Kathy Bonanno of Syracuse, N.Y., has an estimation contest. The contest features a different sized see-through container filled with different objects each week (macaroni, pennies, beans, etc.). The students discuss the contents and different methods to make their estimates, and then they submit their guess at the end of the week. Winners are posted each week; the non-winning estimates are used to help solve other math problems.