Fostering Children's Mathematical Power: An Investigative Approach To K-8 Mathematics Instruction

Description
This text is the product of a seven year effort to develop an elementary mathematics methods text that fully implements the NCTM standards for mathematics teaching and learning. These standards do not recommend a band-aid approach to reform, that is, supplementing existing practices with some new techniques to better accomplish the same old goals. Instead the standards propose radical surgery, profound changes in what and how mathematics is taught and assessed. That is the purpose of this text, to show how to make mathematics instruction consistent with all three of the central NCTM tenets:
1. Making mathematics relevant to the everyday lives of students.
2. Making mathematics a problem-based or reasoning-based activity.
3. Making mathematics a meaningful (understandable) learning activity.

Features
Investigative Approach--The author imbeds these three tenets in what he labels the investigative approach to mathematics instruction. It involves a unique format in which students interact with the text material through a series of reader inquiries that explore key ideas about mathematics, children's mathematical learning, and mathematical teaching. These inquiries constitute the core of the book.

Personalized Teaching Guide--To encourage personalized learning, the pages of this book have been perforated and 3-hole punched so that its contents can be reorganized and/or mixed with materials from other sources to form a Personalized Teaching Guide. In short, this book should be viewed as a starting point in the long road to professional development in mathematics instruction.