Dig into problem solving and reflect on current teaching practices with this exceptional resource. Meaningful instructional tools and methods are provided to help teachers understand each problem solving strategy and how to use it with their students. Teachers are given opportunities to practice problems themselves and reflect on how they can better integrate problem solving into their instruction. This resource supports College and Career Readiness Standards.

Authors address mathematical problem solving, why it is so important, and how to make it part of the mathematics program.

Presents techniques and examples for teaching prekindergarten through second grade students mathematical thinking and problem solving, and includes a CD-ROM containing modifiable activities.

The term problem-solving sounds scary. Who wants problems? Why do we want to subject ourselves and youngsters to problems? The word problem comes from the word probe, meaning inquiry. Inquiry is a much friendlier idea. Rather than attack a problem that has been given to us, let us accept an invitation to inquire into and to explore an interesting opportunity. Even toddlers can excel at inquiring, exploring, and investigating the world around them!PROBLEM-SOLVING TECHNIQUESSuccessful FlailingDo SomethingWishful ThinkingThe Power of DrawingMake It SmallEliminate Incorrect ChoicesPerseverance Is KeySecond-Guess the AuthorAvoid Hard WorkGo to the Xtremes

Help your students to think critically and creatively through team-based problem solving instead of focusing on testing and outcomes. Professionals throughout the education system are recognizing that standardized testing is holding students back. Schools tend to view children as outcomes rather than as individuals who require guidance on thinking critically and creatively. Awesome Math focuses on team-based problem solving to teach discrete mathematics, a subject essential for success in the STEM careers of the future. Built on the increasingly popular growth mindset, this timely book emphasizes a problem-solving approach for developing the skills necessary to think critically, creatively, and collaboratively. In its current form, math education is a series of exercises: straightforward problems with easily-obtained answers. Problem solving, however, involves multiple creative approaches to solving meaningful and interesting problems. The authors, co-founders of the multi-layered educational organization AwesomeMath, have developed an innovative approach to teaching mathematics that will enable educators to: Move their students beyond the calculus trap to study the areas of mathematics most of them will need in the modern world Show students how problem solving will help them achieve their educational and career goals and form lifelong communities of support and collaboration Encourage and reinforce curiosity, critical thinking, and creativity in their students Get students into the growth mindset, coach math teams, and make math fun again Create lesson plans built on problem based learning and identify and develop educational resources in their schools Awesome Math: Teaching Mathematics with Problem Based Learning is a must-have resource for general education teachers and math specialists in grades 6 to 12, and resource specialists, special education teachers, elementary educators, and other primary education professionals.

If people are endowed with a "number instinct" similar to the "language instinct" -- as recent research suggests -- then why can't everyone do math? In The Math Gene, mathematician and popular writer Keith Devlin attacks both sides of this question. Devlin offers a breathtakingly new theory of language development that describes how language evolved in two stages and how its main purpose was not communication. Devlin goes on to show that the ability to think mathematically arose out of the same symbol-manipulating ability that was so crucial to the very first emergence of true language. Why, then, can't we do math as well as we speak? The answer, says Devlin, is that we can and do -- we just don't recognize when we're using mathematical reasoning.

This book contributes to the field of mathematical problem solving by exploring current themes, trends and research perspectives. It does so by addressing five broad and related dimensions: problem solving heuristics, problem solving and technology, inquiry and problem posing in mathematics education, assessment of and through problem solving, and the problem solving environment. Mathematical problem solving has long been recognized as an important aspect of mathematics, teaching mathematics, and learning mathematics. It has influenced mathematics curricula around the world, with calls for the teaching of problem solving as well as the teaching of mathematics through problem solving. And as such, it has been of interest to mathematics education researchers for as long as the field has existed. Research in this area has generally aimed at understanding and relating the processes involved in solving problems to students’ development of mathematical knowledge and problem solving skills. The accumulated knowledge and field developments have included conceptual frameworks for characterizing learners’ success in problem solving activities, cognitive, metacognitive, social and affective analysis, curriculum proposals, and ways to promote problem solving approaches.