Back To Math Homepage

BackTo Math FAQ Page

What are some good Resources for learning about Math?

 

If you go to the Teacher’s Page you will see a listing of some of the best resources available.  I would especially suggest checking out the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) site.  On the Student’s Page is a great resource called The Math Forum.

 

I do have a few books I really like though, and if you wanted to learn about Math and you could only choose a limited number of books, these are the books I would pick.

I have a new favorite:

I like this series of books so much we bought a copy of it for every classroom teacher.  The reason I like it so much is because it makes sense and it is very easy to put the ideas into practice.  It is also fairly reasonable in price.  There are three books in the series, but in reality, if you get the one most appropriate for your child’s age or grade you teach that will be sufficient.  There is a lot of overlap between the books.  I strongly recommend reading chapter 1.  It is a great introduction into teaching math in a way that I think most of us wish we were taught.

I hope you give it a read.
Teaching Student-Centered Mathematics

by John Van de Walle and LouAnn Lovin.

This series is a revision of a book written by John Van de Walle.  He rewrote it with LouAnn Lovin breaking it up into three grade bands.  This was very helpful for teachers because the revised versions are much shorter and much easier to navigate.

  •     K-3 (ISBN: 0-205-40843-5)
  •    3-5 (ISBN: 0-205-40844-3)
  •     5-8 (ISBN: 0-205-41797-3)

Each book cost about $20 and they are about 350 pages.

This is my old favorite.  It is a classic and has been a staple in teacher preparation courses for the last 20 years.  I still have my very worn copy of the first edition that I got at a one-week in-service my first year of teaching.  I still rate this workshop as one of the top three workshops I have had the pleasure of attending in my twenty-plus years of teaching.  I was lucky I got to attend such an influential one so early in my career because it really helped shape my philosophy towards teaching.  This book captures much of that spirit. 

 About Teaching Mathematics: A K–8 Resource (Second Edition)

By Marilyn Burns

Marilyn Burns shares decades of experience with teachers and students in this requisite resource for anyone who teaches math or is concerned with improving math instruction. A compendium of about 240 classroom-tested lessons, this book has provided more than 300,000 teachers with practical wisdom and guidance for building student understanding and skills through a problem-solving approach to teaching mathematics. A discussion section for content-related explanations and an answer key for selected problems are also included. (360 pages)

ISBN 0-941355-25-X     $34.50  

Young Mathematicians at Work

By Catherine Twomey Fosnot and Maarten Dolk

This a series of three books that go into great detail about how children learn important math concepts and what teachers and parents can do to influence that learning.  They read fairly quickly and I found them to be very interesting because they made me rethink some of the assumptions I had made over time.

  •     Constructing Number Sense, Addition, and Subtraction (ISBN 0-325-00353 –X)
  •     Constructing Multiplication and Division (ISBN 0-325-00354-8)
  •     Constructing Fractions, decimals, and Percents (0-325-00355-6)

Each book is about 170 pages long and they cost $18.00 each.