Resources
Annotated Teacher Bibliography
Burns, Marilyn, About Teaching Elementary Mathematics. Sausalito: Math Solutions Publications, 2007. A wonderful resource for methodology and pedagogy. A wealth of lesson ideas!
Geary, D.C., Children's Mathematical Development: Research and Practical Applications. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1994. A research-based psychological perspective of early childhood mathematics teaching and learning.
Ginsburg, Alan, Steven Leinward, Terry Anstrom, and Elizabeth Pollock. What the United States Can Learn from Singapore's World Class Mathematics System. Washington, D.C.: American Institutes for Research, 2005. A research based comparison of the mathematics pedagogy in Singapore and the United States. It looks at grades 1, 3 5 and 6 in both countries and compares specific mathematics curricula from the U.S. with that of Singapore.
Howe, Roger, Taking Place Value Seriously, Preparing Mathematicians to Educate Teachers, http://www.maa.org/pmet/resources.html. An extremely helpful guide for a deeper understanding of elementary level operations and their implications in higher level mathematics.
Ma, Liping, Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999. Provides a wonderful analysis of mathematics instruction and conceptualization in the United States as compared to China. This comparison is thorough in it's analysis of how teachers craft their explanations. A great place to start!
Singapore primary math texts, U.S. Edition Curriculum Planning and Development Division, Ministry of Education, Singapore: Federal Publications. These texts are textbooks and workbooks for students based on the texts used in Singapore. They align nicely with the framework of this unit and are a great resource for visual aids.
Wood, Terry, "Second-Grade Classroom: Psychological Perspective" and "Creating an Environment for Learning Mathematics: Social Interaction Perspective." Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, Monograph Number 6, Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1993: 7-20. This monograph is full of psychological research on mathematics pedagogy and largely focuses on classroom discourse.
Annotated Children's Bibliography
Clements, Andrew. A Million Dots. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. This book is for older grade levels because it deals with much larger numbers and tries to convey the magnitude of a million through pictures. It is fun to read to second graders; I have found they love being presented with a more concrete representation of "million." They also seem excited about the largeness of the numbers.
Jenkins, Steve, Actual Size. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. This is a wonderful book about the size of animals from around the world. Sizes are given in inches and feet, so it would be a good book to add as an extension of linear measurement with customary units. It is also a great motivator because children often find animals interesting. You could read the book and then ask them to estimate the lengths of other animals not mentioned in the text.
Jenkins, Steve. Hottest, Coldest, Highest, Deepest. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. This book compares different geographical features around the world in terms of size and other measurements. It would be a great extension on linear measurement and relative size. It tries to make large measurements more understandable by comparing them to the average height of a person. This would be a great way to tie geography into the topics covered in the unit.
Goldstone, Bruce, Great Estimations. New York: Scholastic Inc., 2006. This is a great resource for photos of collections of objects. It has pictures of groups of 10, 100 and 1,000. The first nine pages easily relate to the concepts covered in this unit. The photos may give students a broader reference point to answer questions like, "Is it about 10 items or about 100 items? Does this look like 100 or 1,000?"
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