ABSTRACT
Students love to use calculators, rulers, tape measures and other mathematical tools, but do they know how and when to use them in their everyday lives? Teachers explicitly instruct their students how to use a ruler to measure an object yet students practice measuring images on a workbook page. The same is often true with calculators; teachers show their students which buttons to press to calculate an answer and then students practice pushing buttons to find answers on a workbook page. Teachers should spend additional time explicitly instructing students how to use mathematics tools when solving real-world problems.
