Putting Essential Understanding Of Fractions Into Practice In Grades 3 5

Do your students suppose that 1/3 is greater than 1/2, since 3 is greater than 2? Do they believe that having “halves” means having two, and only two, congruent “pieces” of a whole? What tasks can you offer—what questions can you ask—to determine what your students know or don’t know—and move them forward in their thinking? This book focuses on the specialised pedagogical content knowledge that you need to teach fractions effectively in grades 3–5. The authors demonstrate how to use this multifaceted knowledge to address the big ideas and essential understandings that students must develop for success with fractions—not only in their current work, but also in higher-level mathematics and a myriad of real-world contexts. Explore rich, research-based strategies and tasks that show how students are reasoning about and making sense of fractions. Use the opportunities that these and similar tasks provide to build on their understanding while identifying and correcting misunderstandings that may be keeping them from taking the next steps in learning.

Do your students believe that division "doesn't make sense" if the divisor is greater than the dividend? Explore rich, researched-based strategies and tasks that show how students are reasoning about and making sense of mulitplication and division. This book focuses on the specialised pedagogical content knowledge that you need to teach multiplication and division effectively in grades 3-5. The authors demonstrate how to use this multifaceted knowledge to address the big ideas and essential understandings that students must develop for success with these computations - not only in their current work, but also in higher-level maths and a myriad of real-world contexts. Explore rich, research-based strategies and tasks that show how students are reasoning about and making sense of multiplication and division. Use the opportunities that these and similar tasks provide to build on their understanding while identifying and correcting misunderstandings that may be keeping them from taking the next steps in learning. About the Series: You have essential understanding. It’s time to put it into practise in your teaching. The Putting Essential Understanding into Practice Series moves NCTM’s Essential Understanding Series into the classroom. The new series details and explores best practises for teaching the essential ideas that students must grasp about fundamental topics in mathematics - topics that are challenging to learn and teach but are critical to the development of mathematical understanding. Classroom vignettes and samples of student work bring each topic to life and questions for reader reflection open it up for hands-on exploration. Each volume underscores connections with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics while highlighting the knowledge of learners, curriculum, understanding into practise, instructional strategies and assessment that pedagogical content knowledge entails. Maximise the potential of student-centred learning and teaching by putting essential understanding into practise.

Focuses on the specialized pedagogical content knowledge that you need to teach ratios and proportions effectively in grades 6-8. The authors demonstrate how to use this multifaceted knowledge to address the big ideas and essential understandings that students must develop for success with ratios and proportions.

This popular text addresses the urgent need for curriculum materials that cross traditional boundaries to include many of the elements that are integrated in the teaching/learning enterprise: mathematics content, teacher understanding, student thinking, teaching methods, instructional activities, and assessment. The book pushes readers beyond the limits of their current understanding of rational numbers, challenging them to refine and explain their thinking--without falling back on rules and procedures they have relied on throughout their lives. Written in a conversational and easy to understand style, this is not a textbook as much as it is a resource book. An underlying assumption is that facilitating teacher understanding using the same questions and activities that may be used with children is one way to help teachers build the comfort and confidence they need to begin talking to children about complex ideas. Unlike a textbook that is used to study formal theory and then discarded when it comes to putting ideas into practice, the many problems and activities included to facilitate teacher learning are valuable resources for use in elementary and middle school classrooms. Changes in the second edition include: *even more student work incorporated in every chapter; *discussion of the connectivity between the topics addressed in the book and the elementary and middle school mathematics curricula; *an increased emphasis on measurement; *expansion of some topics, including number sense, percent, scale factors, similarity, and linear graphs; *clarification of the characteristics of ratio and proportions and how to use these to generate discussion with children; and *content-related interview questions for exploring children's thinking. This book is a valuable resource for researchers and curriculum developers in mathematics education, pre-service and in-service teachers of mathematics, those involved in the mathematical and pedagogical preparation of mathematics teachers, and graduate students in mathematics education. The methods and activities it includes have been tested with students in grades 3-8 and with pre-service and in-service teachers and other adults. This text is accompanied by MORE--a supplement that is not merely an answer key but a resource that includes in-depth discussions of all the problems in the text; develops and extends discussion of the issues, teaching problems, and other considerations raised in the chapters; and contains additional problems--with and without solutions--that instructors may find helpful for assessment purposes.

What is the relationship between fractions and rational numbers? Can you explain why the product of two fractions between 0 and 1 is less than either factor? How are rational numbers related to irrational numbers, which your students will study in later grades? How much do you know… and how much do you need to know? Helping your upper elementary school students develop a robust understanding of rational numbers requires that you understand this mathematics deeply. But what does that mean? This book focuses on essential knowledge for teachers about rational numbers. It is organised around four big ideas, supported by multiple smaller, interconnected ideas-essential understandings. Taking you beyond a simple introduction to rational numbers, the book will broaden and deepen your mathematical understanding of one of the most challenging topics for students and teachers. It will help you engage your students, anticipate their perplexities, avoid pitfalls and dispel misconceptions. You will also learn to develop appropriate tasks, techniques and tools for assessing students’ understanding of the topic. Focus on the ideas that you need to understand thoroughly to teach confidently.

Unpacking"" the ideas related to multiplication and division is a critical step in developing a deeper understanding. To those without specialised training, many of these ideas might appear to be easy to teach. But those who teach in grades 3-5 are aware of their subtleties and complexities. This book identifies and examines two big ideas and related essential understandings for teaching multiplication and division in grades 3–5. Big Idea 1 captures the notion that multiplication is usefully defined as a scalar operation. Problem situations modelled by multiplication have an element that represents the scalar and an element that represents the quantity to which the scalar applies. Big Idea 2 relates to the algorithms that problem solvers have invented - some of which have become “standard” - for multiplying and dividing. The authors examine the ways in which counting, adding and subtracting lead to multiplication and division, as well as the role that these operations play in algebraic expressions and other advanced topics. The book examines challenges in teaching, learning and assessment and is interspersed with questions for teachers’ reflection.

Do your students have the incorrect idea that addition “makes numbers bigger” and subtraction “makes numbers smaller”? Do they believe that subtraction is always “taking away”? What tasks can you offer - what questions can you ask - to determine what your students know or don’t know - and move them forward in their thinking? This book focuses on the specialized pedagogical content knowledge that you need to teach addition and subtraction effectively in prekindergarten–grade 2. The authors demonstrate how to use this multifaceted knowledge to address the big ideas and essential understandings that students must develop for success with these computations - not only in their current work, but also in higher-level mathematics and a myriad of real-world contexts. Explore rich, research-based strategies and tasks that show how students are reasoning about and making sense of addition and subtraction. Use the opportunities that these and similar tasks provide to build on their understanding while identifying and correcting misunderstandings that may be keeping them from taking the next steps in learning. You have essential understanding. It’s time to put it into practice in your teaching. The Putting Essential Understanding into Practice Series moves NCTM’s Essential Understanding Series into the classroom. The new series details and explores best practices for teaching the essential ideas that students must grasp about fundamental topics in mathematics - topics that are challenging to learn and teach but are critical to the development of mathematical understanding. Classroom vignettes and samples of student work bring each topic to life, and questions for reader reaction open it up for hands-on exploration. Each volume underscores connections with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics while highlighting the knowledge of learners, curriculum, instructional strategies, and assessment that pedagogical content knowledge entails. Resources and tasks are available at nctm.org/more4U.