Windows on Mathematical Meanings


Book Description

This book challenges some of the conventional wisdoms on the learning of mathematics. The authors use the computer as a window onto mathematical meaning-making. The pivot of their theory is the idea of webbing, which explains how someone struggling with a new mathematical idea can draw on supportive knowledge, and reconciles the individual's role in mathematical learning with the part played by epistemological, social and cultural forces.




Windows on Teaching Math


Book Description

A practical hands-on guide to improving the teaching of mathematics. Provides a collection of cases that blend important mathematics content with the real complexities of school and classroom life.




Teaching Mathematics Vocabulary in Context


Book Description

As Miki Murray proves, mathematics vocabulary has the power to enhance the conceptual learning of mathematics for middle school students. It's an essential tool to help them to express their mathematical thinking coherently and clearly to peers and teachers, to share problem-solving techniques, to gain confidence, and to participate in classroom discourse. Murray offers a range of strategies that highlight the important role language plays in the learning of math. Grounded in research and developed from more than 40 years of teaching, reflecting, and learning, Murray's proven strategies are immediately usable or adaptable by teachers.




Mathematical Vistas


Book Description

This book collects nine related mathematical essays which will intrigue and inform. From the reviews: "The authors put their writing where their talents are, and students get to see just how alive mathematics is...there is much to commend the book. It contains plenty of interesting mathematics, often going in unusual directions. I like the diagrams; the authors have chosen mathematics that involves especially pretty ones." --THE MATHEMATICAL ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA




Strengths-Based Teaching and Learning in Mathematics


Book Description

"This book is a game changer! Strengths-Based Teaching and Learning in Mathematics: 5 Teaching Turnarounds for Grades K- 6 goes beyond simply providing information by sharing a pathway for changing practice. . . Focusing on our students’ strengths should be routine and can be lost in the day-to-day teaching demands. A teacher using these approaches can change the trajectory of students’ lives forever. All teachers need this resource! Connie S. Schrock Emporia State University National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics President, 2017-2019 NEW COVID RESOURCES ADDED: A Parent’s Toolkit to Strengths-Based Learning in Math is now available on the book’s companion website to support families engaged in math learning at home. This toolkit provides a variety of home-based activities and games for families to engage in together. Your game plan for unlocking mathematics by focusing on students’ strengths. We often evaluate student thinking and their work from a deficit point of view, particularly in mathematics, where many teachers have been taught that their role is to diagnose and eradicate students’ misconceptions. But what if instead of focusing on what students don’t know or haven’t mastered, we identify their mathematical strengths and build next instructional steps on students’ points of power? Beth McCord Kobett and Karen S. Karp answer this question and others by highlighting five key teaching turnarounds for improving students’ mathematics learning: identify teaching strengths, discover and leverage students’ strengths, design instruction from a strengths-based perspective, help students identify their points of power, and promote strengths in the school community and at home. Each chapter provides opportunities to stop and consider current practice, reflect, and transfer practice while also sharing · Downloadable resources, activities, and tools · Examples of student work within Grades K–6 · Real teachers’ notes and reflections for discussion It’s time to turn around our approach to mathematics instruction, end deficit thinking, and nurture each student’s mathematical strengths by emphasizing what makes them each unique and powerful.




Rehumanizing Mathematics for Black, Indigenous, and Latinx Students


Book Description

Mathematics education will never truly improve until it adequately addresses those students whom the system has most failed. The 2018 volume of Annual Perspectives in Mathematics Education (APME) series showcases the efforts of classroom teachers, school counselors and administrators, teacher educators, and education researchers to ensure mathematics teaching and learning is a humane, positive, and powerful experience for students who are Black, Indigenous, and/or Latinx. The book's chapters are grouped into three sections: Attending to Students' Identities through Learning, Professional Development That Embraces Community, and Principles for Teaching and Teacher Identity. To turn our schools into places where children who are Indigenous, Black, and Latinx can thrive, we need to rehumanize our teaching practices. The chapters in this volume describe a variety of initiatives that work to place these often marginalized students--and their identities, backgrounds, challenges, and aspirations--at the center of mathematics teaching and learning. We meet teachers who listen to and learn from their students as they work together to reverse those dehumanizing practices found in traditional mathematics education. With these examples as inspiration, this volume opens a conversation on what mathematics educators can do to enable Latinx, Black, and Indigenous students to build on their strengths and fulfill their promise.




Learning and Teaching Mathematics 0-8


Book Description

′What a super book! It is absolutely packed with practical ideas and activities to help you love maths, and love teaching and/or learning it. It certainly helps to develop an enthusiasm for a subject most adults tend to say "I′m no good at..."′ - Early Years Educator ‘A wonderful book, packed with practical ideas and activities to help all students love maths.’ - Jo Boaler, Professor of Mathematics Education, Stanford University Fostering an enthusiasm for mathematics in young children is a vital part of supporting their mathematical development. Underpinned by subject and pedagogical knowledge, case studies and research-based perspectives, the authors provide clear guidance on how to support young children′s learning and understanding in an effective and engaging way. Contemporary approaches to developing essential mathematical learning for young children are explored, including: play, practical activities and talk for mathematics outdoor learning understanding pattern counting, calculation and place value measures and shape problem solving and representing mathematics assessment working with parents. Written for both trainees and practitioners working with children aged 0 to 8 years, including those studying for Early Years and Early Childhood degrees and those on Primary PGCE and Primary Education courses, this book offers mathematical subject knowledge and teaching ideas in one volume. Helen Taylor is Course Leader of PGCE Primary Part-time Mathematics at Canterbury Christ Church University. Andrew Harris is Course Leader of PGCE Modular Mathematics at Canterbury Christ Church University.




Mathematics for Human Flourishing


Book Description

"The ancient Greeks argued that the best life was filled with beauty, truth, justice, play and love. The mathematician Francis Su knows just where to find them."--Kevin Hartnett, Quanta Magazine" This is perhaps the most important mathematics book of our time. Francis Su shows mathematics is an experience of the mind and, most important, of the heart."--James Tanton, Global Math Project For mathematician Francis Su, a society without mathematical affection is like a city without concerts, parks, or museums. To miss out on mathematics is to live without experiencing some of humanity's most beautiful ideas. In this profound book, written for a wide audience but especially for those disenchanted by their past experiences, an award-winning mathematician and educator weaves parables, puzzles, and personal reflections to show how mathematics meets basic human desires--such as for play, beauty, freedom, justice, and love--and cultivates virtues essential for human flourishing. These desires and virtues, and the stories told here, reveal how mathematics is intimately tied to being human. Some lessons emerge from those who have struggled, including philosopher Simone Weil, whose own mathematical contributions were overshadowed by her brother's, and Christopher Jackson, who discovered mathematics as an inmate in a federal prison. Christopher's letters to the author appear throughout the book and show how this intellectual pursuit can--and must--be open to all.




Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12


Book Description

A thinking student is an engaged student Teachers often find it difficult to implement lessons that help students go beyond rote memorization and repetitive calculations. In fact, institutional norms and habits that permeate all classrooms can actually be enabling "non-thinking" student behavior. Sparked by observing teachers struggle to implement rich mathematics tasks to engage students in deep thinking, Peter Liljedahl has translated his 15 years of research into this practical guide on how to move toward a thinking classroom. Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K–12 helps teachers implement 14 optimal practices for thinking that create an ideal setting for deep mathematics learning to occur. This guide Provides the what, why, and how of each practice and answers teachers’ most frequently asked questions Includes firsthand accounts of how these practices foster thinking through teacher and student interviews and student work samples Offers a plethora of macro moves, micro moves, and rich tasks to get started Organizes the 14 practices into four toolkits that can be implemented in order and built on throughout the year When combined, these unique research-based practices create the optimal conditions for learner-centered, student-owned deep mathematical thinking and learning, and have the power to transform mathematics classrooms like never before.




Discrete Mathematics Using a Computer


Book Description

Computer science abounds with applications of discrete mathematics, yet s- dents of computer science often study discrete mathematics in the context of purely mathematical applications. They have to ?gure out for themselves how to apply the ideas of discrete mathematics to computing problems. It is not easy. Most students fail to experience broad success in this enterprise, which is not surprising, since many of the most important advances in science and engineeringhavebeen, precisely, applicationsofmathematicstospeci?cscience and engineering problems. Tobesure,mostdiscretemathtextbooksincorporatesomeaspectsapplying discrete math to computing, but it usually takes the form of asking students to write programs to compute the number of three-ball combinations there are in a set of ten balls or, at best, to implement a graph algorithm. Few texts ask students to use mathematical logic to analyze properties of digital circuits or computer programs or to apply the set theoretic model of functions to understand higher-order operations. A major aim of this text is to integrate, tightly, the study of discrete mathematics with the study of central problems of computer science.