Unleashing Students' Potential through Creative Math

One of the most powerful books. Math should not be a gate keeper. Integrates Dweck's work. Teacher must read. Add to your teacher prep programs and book study plc. What happened to the kindle version?

Simply put this book has altered my life and brought about a transformation in how I view challenges. I tutor math and can guarantee you will walk away a different person as well as a better educator.

I have always believed that anyone can learn math. I was always successful in my classroom and had students who hated math grow to love it so much they would rush to my class.

I took on an assignment in a Saudi Arabian International school teaching Algebra and Geometry and started to teach these methods. The students didn't even have 3rd grade math skills. The students, parents all complained to the admin and I was forced to teach "show the steps, give them practice problems, repeat". Of course hardly any of the students could pass any standards AND they didn't understand the why. Word problems, forget it. By the end of the year I had chosen 1 class in each subject to do the "traditional way" and another the way this book outlines. With a "just for fun" end of year standardized test, those that followed this method scored 20% higher than the traditional method because they had more long term retention and had problem solving techniques that the traditional didn't have.

Recommended by a friend studying for his Ph.D. in math education. This book debunks several common conceptions about math: that quicker is better, that boys are better at it than girls, that some people are born with "math brains" and others are not. The author encourages us to embrace mistakes as an opportunity to learn and suggests that all high schoolers would benefit from higher level math courses.

This book represents the major philosophical shifts in mathematics education today. In the era of Common Core, it is imperative that all students are provided ample opportunities to make sense of and learn mathematics to the highest level. Dr. Boaler describes several components of math classrooms that often lead, unintentionally, to disparities between groups of students, including the norms we set (explicitly or implicitly), tasks we use, the kind of classroom community we develop, and how we assess. In order to truly achieve greater equity within mathematics education, these ideas need to be considered as we reflect on our practice as teachers of mathematics.

This book represents the major philosophical shifts in mathematics education today. In the era of Common Core, it is imperative that all students are provided ample opportunities to make sense of and learn mathematics to the highest level. Dr. Boaler describes several components of math classrooms that often lead, unintentionally, to disparities between groups of students, including the norms we set (explicitly or implicitly), tasks we use, the kind of classroom community we develop, and how we assess. In order to truly achieve greater equity within mathematics education, these ideas need to be considered as we reflect on our practice as teachers of mathematics.