Accessible Mathematics


Book Description

Raising students' math achievement doesn't mean ripping up your planning book and starting over. In Accessible Mathematics Steven Leinwand (author of Sensible Mathematics) shows how small shifts in the good teaching you already do can make a big difference in student learning. Steve focuses on the crucial issue of classroom instruction. He scours the research and visits highly effective classrooms for practical examples of small adjustments to your teaching that lead to deeper student learning in math. Some of his 10 classroom-tested teaching shifts may surprise you and others will validate your thinking. But all of them will improve your students' performance. Thoroughly practical and ever-aware of the limits of teachers' time, Steve gives you everything you need to put his commonsense ideas to use immediately. His extensive planning advice will help you streamline your teaching to get more from everything you do. Classroom examples from every grade level model teaching language and instructional moves. And his suggestions for professional learning help increase your effectiveness through the power of collaboration. Steven Leinwand shares your priority: raising the mathematical understanding and achievement of every one of your students. Read Accessible Mathematics, try his 10 suggestions in your practice, and discover how minor shifts in your teaching can put student learning into high gear.




Making Mathematics Accessible to English Learners


Book Description

This practical book helps middle and high school mathematics teachers effectively reach English learners in their classrooms. Designed for teachers who have had limited preparation for teaching mathematics to English learners, the guide offers an integrated approach to teaching mathematics content and English language skills, including guidance on best instructional practices from the field, powerful and concrete strategies for teaching mathematics content along with academic language, and sample lesson scenarios that can be implemented immediately in any mathematics class. It includes: Rubrics to help teachers identify the most important language skills at five ELD levels Practical guidance and tips from the field Seven scaffolding strategies for differentiating instruction Seven tools to promote mathematical language Assessment techniques and accommodations to lower communication barriers for English learners Three integrated lesson scenarios demonstrating how to combine and embed these various strategies, tools, techniques, and approaches Chapter topics include teaching inquiry-based mathematics, understanding first and second language development, teaching the language of mathematics, scaffolding mathematics learning, and applying strategies in the classroom.




My Kids Can


Book Description

Teaching mathematics to a range of learners has always been challenging. With the widespread use of inclusion and RTI, having a variety of effective teaching options for students who struggle is more important than ever. In My Kids Can, you'll get instructional strategies that allow all struggling math learners to move along the path toward grade-level competency. In My Kids Can teachers share successful ways to work with struggling students. Their instruction is aligned with the NCTM standards and guided by five powerful core principles. Make mathematical thinking explicit. Link assessment and teaching. Build understanding through talk. Expect students to take responsibility for their own learning and support them as they do. Work collaboratively with special education staff to plan effective instruction. These teachers describe how they use whole-group, small-group, and individual instruction as well as other strategies that hold kids to high expectations while scaffolding content and processes across the math curriculum. In addition, an accompanying DVD presents classroom footage of their teaching and includes the language, dialogue, and teaching moves you'll adapt for success with your students. The DVD also contains teacher interviews that answer difficult questions of practice. Best of all, with professional learning questions and video analyses, My Kids Can is great for individuals, teacher study groups, staff development, and preservice courses. Help every child grow as a mathematician. Trust your fellow teachers for instruction that works. Read My Kids Can and use its proven-effective strategies and its professional supports to build on your students' strengths and address their learning needs.




A Dingo Ate My Math Book


Book Description

A Dingo Ate My Math Book presents ingenious, unusual, and beautiful nuggets of mathematics with a distinctly Australian flavor. It focuses, for example, on Australians' love of sports and gambling, and on Melbourne's iconic, mathematically inspired architecture. Written in a playful and humorous style, the book offers mathematical entertainment as well as a glimpse of Australian culture for the mathematically curious of all ages. This collection of engaging stories was extracted from the Maths Masters column that ran from 2007 to 2014 in Australia's Age newspaper. The maths masters in question are Burkard Polster and Marty Ross, two (immigrant) Aussie mathematicians, who each week would write about math in the news, providing a new look at old favorites, mathematical history, quirks of school mathematics—whatever took their fancy. All articles were written for a very general audience, with the intention of being as inviting as possible and assuming a minimum of mathematical background.




Illustrating Mathematics


Book Description

This book is for anyone who wishes to illustrate their mathematical ideas, which in our experience means everyone. It is organized by material, rather than by subject area, and purposefully emphasizes the process of creating things, including discussions of failures that occurred along the way. As a result, the reader can learn from the experiences of those who came before, and will be inspired to create their own illustrations. Topics illustrated within include prime numbers, fractals, the Klein bottle, Borromean rings, tilings, space-filling curves, knot theory, billiards, complex dynamics, algebraic surfaces, groups and prime ideals, the Riemann zeta function, quadratic fields, hyperbolic space, and hyperbolic 3-manifolds. Everyone who opens this book should find a type of mathematics with which they identify. Each contributor explains the mathematics behind their illustration at an accessible level, so that all readers can appreciate the beauty of both the object itself and the mathematics behind it.




Making Mathematics Accessible for Elementary Students who Struggle


Book Description

Making Mathematics Accessible for Elementary Students Who Struggle: Using CRA/CSA for Interventions provides educators with focused methods for students who struggle in elementary mathematics. The methods and procedures revolve around the CRA/CSA (concrete-representational/semi-concrete-abstract) instructional sequence. These strategies are intended for small group intensive instruction, one that addresses students' need for increased repetition and explicitness that cannot be provided within a large group of students with diverse learning needs. Current research on the CRA/CSA instructional sequence is scattered across multiple resources. This book provides comprehensive coverage of the most up-to-date research in one user-friendly resource. The sequence is included in every chapter and addresses instruction related to number sense, counting, basic operations, complex operations, basic fraction concepts, and operations with fractions. This resource is written by experienced professors spanning the fields of special education and curriculum and teaching. Its professional insight, aligned with current mathematical teaching standards and CRA/CSA research, makes this text invaluable to upcoming or current teachers in elementary mathematics. Features: Explicit and hands-on examples of CRA/CSA's use aligned with current mathematics standards and practices, Suggestions and tips for various classroom situations, Application questions for every chapter, Drawings and diagrams associated with steps of the teaching process, Classroom-tested strategies Book jacket.




A Project-Based Guide to Undergraduate Research in Mathematics


Book Description

This volume provides accessible and self-contained research problems designed for undergraduate student projects, and simultaneously promotes the development of sustainable undergraduate research programs. The chapters in this work span a variety of topical areas of pure and applied mathematics and mathematics education. Each chapter gives a self-contained introduction on a research topic with an emphasis on the specific tools and knowledge needed to create and maintain fruitful research programs for undergraduates. Some of the topics discussed include:• Disease modeling• Tropical curves and surfaces• Numerical semigroups• Mathematics EducationThis volume will primarily appeal to undergraduate students interested in pursuing research projects and faculty members seeking to mentor them. It may also aid students and faculty participating in independent studies and capstone projects.




Rethinking Mathematics


Book Description

In this unique collection, more than 30 articles show how to weave social justice issues throughout the mathematics curriculum, as well as how to integrate mathematics into other curricular areas. Rethinking Mathematics offers teaching ideas, lesson plans, and reflections by practitioners and mathematics educators. This is real-world math-math that helps students analyze problems as they gain essential academic skills. This book offers hope and guidance for teachers to enliven and strengthen their math teaching. It will deepen students' understanding of society and help prepare them to be critical, active participants in a democracy. Blending theory and practice, this is the only resource of its kind.




Figuring Out Fluency in Mathematics Teaching and Learning, Grades K-8


Book Description

Because fluency practice is not a worksheet. Fluency in mathematics is more than adeptly using basic facts or implementing algorithms. Real fluency involves reasoning and creativity, and it varies by the situation at hand. Figuring Out Fluency in Mathematics Teaching and Learning offers educators the inspiration to develop a deeper understanding of procedural fluency, along with a plethora of pragmatic tools for shifting classrooms toward a fluency approach. In a friendly and accessible style, this hands-on guide empowers educators to support students in acquiring the repertoire of reasoning strategies necessary to becoming versatile and nimble mathematical thinkers. It includes: "Seven Significant Strategies" to teach to students as they work toward procedural fluency. Activities, fluency routines, and games that encourage learning the efficiency, flexibility, and accuracy essential to real fluency. Reflection questions, connections to mathematical standards, and techniques for assessing all components of fluency. Suggestions for engaging families in understanding and supporting fluency. Fluency is more than a toolbox of strategies to choose from; it’s also a matter of equity and access for all learners. Give your students the knowledge and power to become confident mathematical thinkers.




Mathematical Logic


Book Description

This classic introduction to the main areas of mathematical logic provides the basis for a first graduate course in the subject. It embodies the viewpoint that mathematical logic is not a collection of vaguely related results, but a coherent method of attacking some of the most interesting problems, which face the mathematician. The author presents the basic concepts in an unusually clear and accessible fashion, concentrating on what he views as the central topics of mathematical logic: proof theory, model theory, recursion theory, axiomatic number theory, and set theory. There are many exercises, and they provide the outline of what amounts to a second book that goes into all topics in more depth. This book has played a role in the education of many mature and accomplished researchers.