Students often struggle to connect math with the real world. Word problems—a combination of words, numbers, and mathematical operations—can be a perfect vehicle to take abstract numbers off the page.

A controversial new movement promoting the "science of math" has come into the math establishment's crosshairs.

In DeKalb County, Ala., elementary school math classes have gotten noisy. In a good way. Instead of worksheets and textbooks, children practice adding and subtracting with tiny toy bears. They ...