Partnering With Parents in Elementary School Math


Book Description

How to build productive relationships in math education I wasn’t taught this way. I can’t help my child! These are common refrains from today’s parents and guardians, who are often overwhelmed, confused, worried, and frustrated about how to best support their children with what they see as the "new math." The problem has been compounded by the shift to more distance learning in response to a global pandemic. Partnering With Parents in Elementary School Math provides educators with long overdue guidance on how to productively partner and communicate with families about their children’s mathematics learning. It includes reproducible surveys, letters, and planning documents that can be used to improve the home-school relationship, which in turn helps students, parents, teachers, and education leaders alike. Readers will find guidance on how to: · Understand and empathize with what fuels parents’ anxieties and concerns · Align as a school and set parents’ expectations about what math instruction their children will experience and how it will help them · Communicate clearly and productively with parents about their students’ progress, strengths, and needs in math · Run informative and fun family events · support homework · Coach parents to portray a productive disposition about math in front of their children Educators, families, and students are best served when proactive, productive, and healthy relationships have been developed with each other and with the realities of today′s math education. This guide shows how these relationships can be built.




Elementary School Mathematics For Parents And Teachers - Volume 2


Book Description

'The exposition is exceptionally clear, and keeps its audience in mind: in the end, this is ‘a book for adults on mathematics for children’. ‘Adults’ here includes parents as well as teachers; in the author’s words, ‘Every parent is automatically an educator!’ There is considerable merit in including parents in the elementary mathematics conversation; it is a pleasure to see books like Kupferman’s that explain elementary math to adults. If our students, in their future role as teachers, can enlist parents as allies, everyone will benefit. These books are one good way to begin addressing that challenge.'MAA ReviewsThis book covers the elementary school mathematics curriculum common in most parts of the world. Its aim is to serve educators (teachers and parents) as a guide for teaching mathematics at elementary school level. The book focuses both on content knowledge and on pedagogical content knowledge. It bridges the gap between fundamental mathematical principles and good teaching practices. It also offers the reader a glimpse on how mathematicians perceive elementary mathematics and presents ideas for specific mathematical activities.Volume 2 focuses on content taught in the higher grades of elementary school. It covers the following topics: multiplication and division of multi-digit numbers, divisibility and primality, divisibility signs, sequences, fractions and their representations, and fraction arithmetic.The author is also a co-founder of Matific, an adaptive game-based teaching and learning tool for primary school mathematics. Independent studies have shown Matific to improve test scores, reduce maths anxiety, and increase motivation. Matific is available in 26 languages and aligned to mathematics curricula in 46 countries. Awards include Best Mathematics Instructional Solution, Best Game-Based Curriculum Solution and Best Educational App. For a trial, visit https://www.matific.com.




It's Elementary


Book Description

What's happened to the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division you learned in school? And why are your children talking in math class and sharing answers? In jargon-free language, It's Elementary not only decodes current teaching practices but also demystifies the fundamental concepts that your children need to understand to be successful maths learners.




How Math Works


Book Description

We hear all the time how American children are falling behind their global peers in various basic subjects, but particularly in math. Is it our fear of math that constrains us? Or our inability to understand math’s place in relation to our everyday lives? How can we help our children better understand the basics of arithmetic if we’re not really sure we understand them ourselves? Here, G. Arnell Williams helps parents and teachers explore the world of math that their elementary school children are learning. Taking readers on a tour of the history of arithmetic, and its growth into the subject we know it to be today, Williams explores the beauty and relevance of mathematics by focusing on the great conceptual depth and genius already inherent in the elementary mathematics familiar to us all, and by connecting it to other well-known areas such as language and the conceptual aspects of everyday life. The result is a book that will help you to better explain mathematics to your children. For those already well versed in these areas, the book offers a tour of the great conceptual and historical facts and assumptions that most simply take for granted. If you are someone who has always struggled with mathematics either because you couldn’t do it or because you never really understood why the rules are the way they are, if you were irritated with the way it was taught to you with the emphasis being only on learning the rules and “recipes” by rote as opposed to obtaining a good conceptual understanding, then How Math Works is for you!




Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics


Book Description

Studies of teachers in the U.S. often document insufficient subject matter knowledge in mathematics. Yet, these studies give few examples of the knowledge teachers need to support teaching, particularly the kind of teaching demanded by recent reforms in mathematics education. Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics describes the nature and development of the knowledge that elementary teachers need to become accomplished mathematics teachers, and suggests why such knowledge seems more common in China than in the United States, despite the fact that Chinese teachers have less formal education than their U.S. counterparts. The anniversary edition of this bestselling volume includes the original studies that compare U.S and Chinese elementary school teachers’ mathematical understanding and offers a powerful framework for grasping the mathematical content necessary to understand and develop the thinking of school children. Highlighting notable changes in the field and the author’s work, this new edition includes an updated preface, introduction, and key journal articles that frame and contextualize this seminal work.




Adding Parents to the Equation


Book Description

Are you frustrated or confused by the way math is taught to your child today? Are you tired of trying to figure out what your child is doing when they draw visuals in math? Do you want to feel smarter than a 5th grader again? Well, this book is for you. We have taken the major parts of the 21st Century mathematics curriculum and rewritten it in an easy-to-read format. This book breaks down all the educational jargon so you can finally communicate mathematically with your child again. No matter whether your child is 3 months old or 10 years old, this book will give you a stronger understanding of the how, the why, and the what behind the shifts in math education today.




Success from the Start


Book Description

This book highlights how students learn math and the pedagogy behind it. Using vignettes based on real classroom discussions, the authors illustrate effective teaching practices to support math learning. Success from the Start: Your First Years Teaching Elementary Mathematics acts as a supportive and reassuring companion that you can return to throughout your journey as an elementary mathematics teacher. As a beginning elementary mathematics teacher you might already be asking yourself these questions: How can I differentiate my teaching to meet the diverse needs of my students? What assessments best advance student learning? How can students understand math if I do not show them different strategies and tell them about the underlying mathematical structures and properties? What advice do I give parents about how to support their children’s math learning?




The Math Pact, Middle School


Book Description

A schoolwide solution for students’ mathematics success! Do you sometimes start to teach a mathematics concept and feel like you’re staring at a sea of bewildered faces? What happens when you discover students previously learned a calculation trick or a mnemonic that has muddied their long-term understanding? When "rules" seem to change from year to year, teacher to teacher, or school to school, mathematics can seem like a disconnected mystery for students. Clear up the confusion with a Mathematics Whole-School Agreement! Expanded from the highly popular "Rules that Expire" series of NCTM articles, this essential guide leads educators through the collaborative step-by-step process of establishing a coherent and consistent learner-centered and equitable approach to mathematics instruction. Through this work, you will identify, streamline, and become passionate about using clear and consistent mathematical language, notations, representations, rules, and generalizations within and across classrooms and grades. Importantly, you’ll learn to avoid "rules that expire"—tricks that may seem to help students in one grade but hurt in the long run. Features of this book include · Abundant grade-specific examples · Effective working plans for sustainability · Barrier-busting tips, to-dos, and try-it-outs · Practical templates and checklists · PLC prompts and discussion points When teachers unite across grades, students hit the ground running every year. Take the next step together as a team and help all your students build on existing understanding to find new success and most importantly, love learning and doing mathematics!




Teaching Math to Multilingual Students, Grades K-8


Book Description

Using strengths-based approaches to support development in mathematics It’s time to re-imagine what’s possible and celebrate the brilliance multilingual learners bring to today’s classrooms. Innovative teaching strategies can position these learners as leaders in mathematics. Yet, as the number of multilingual learners in North American schools grows, many teachers have not had opportunities to gain the competencies required to teach these learners effectively, especially in disciplines such as mathematics. Multilingual learners—historically called English Language Learners—are expected to interpret the meaning of problems, analyze, make conjectures, evaluate their progress, and discuss and understand their own approaches and the approaches of their peers in mathematics classrooms. Thus, language plays a vital role in mathematics learning, and demonstrating these competencies in a second (or third) language is a challenging endeavor. Based on best practices and the authors’ years of research, this guide offers practical approaches that equip grades K-8 teachers to draw on the strengths of multilingual learners, partner with their families, and position these learners for success. Readers will find: • A focus on multilingual students as leaders • A strength-based approach that draws on students’ life experiences and cultural backgrounds • An emphasis on maintaining high expectations for learners’ capacity for mastering rigorous content • Strategies for representing concepts in different formats • Stop and Think questions throughout and reflection questions at the end of each chapter • Try It! Implementation activities, student work examples, and classroom transcripts With case studies and activities that provide a solid foundation for teachers’ growth and exploration, this groundbreaking book will help teachers and teacher educators engage in meaningful, humanized mathematics instruction.




Arithmetic For Parents: A Book For Grown-ups About Children's Mathematics (Revised Edition)


Book Description

This book is the result of a unique experience: a research mathematician teaching in an elementary school. It tells about a fascinating discovery made by the author — that elementary mathematics has a lot of depth and beauty, and that the secret to its teaching is in understanding its deep points.The first part of the book discusses the nature of mathematics and its beauty. The second part tells about the teaching principles the author distilled from his experience. The third part is an excursion through the arithmetic studied in elementary school, accompanied by personal stories, historical anecdotes and teaching suggestions. The appendix relates the fascinating story of modern day politics of mathematical education.The book was a bestseller in Israel, and has been translated into many languages. The extraordinary combination of mathematical and didactic insights makes it an essential guide for parents and teachers alike.