Great Ideas of Primary Mathematics

CONTENTS OF CURRICULUM UNIT 11.06.10

  1. Unit Guide
  1. Rationale
  2. Objectives
  3. Background and Teaching Strategies
  4. Equations
  5. Classroom Activities
  6. Bibliography
  7. Appendices
  8. Endnotes

Strong Foundations = Success In Equations

Aimee MacSween

Published September 2011

Tools for this Unit:

Bibliography

"Algebra I Released Test Questions." CA Dept of Education. www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/rtqalg1.pdf (accessed August 1, 2011). Released test questions from the California State Test.

"Content Standards – Standards & Frameworks (CA Dept of Education). "CA Dept of Education Mobile. http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/ (accessed August 3, 2011). Algebra I Standards for the state of California.

Cuoco, Albert. CME Project. Boston, Mass: Pearson, 2009. Excellent, straight-forward text, which gives clear, well-rounded examples.

Howe, Roger. "From Arithmetic to Algebra – Journal of Mathematics Education." China National Knowledge Infrastructure. http://ath.arizona.edu/~ime/2008-09/Algebra%20Essays/ArithtoAlg.pdf (accessed August 3, 3011). All Algebra teachers should read this article. It is a detailed explanation with examples about teaching word problems.

Howe, Roger. "The 'Rule of Signs' in Arithemtic." Essays for the Noyce-Dana project. https://www2.bc.edu/~friedber/essays.html (accessed August 1, 2011). Great teacher background for signs. Also, valuable examples dealing with signed numbers for students at the end of the article.

Ma, Liping. Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers' Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States. New York: Routledge, 2009. Convicting book, good for all level math teachers.

MacNeal, Edward. Mathsemantics: Making Numbers Talk Sense. New York: Penguin Books 19951994. This is an eye-opening book. Great thoughts to keep in mind while teaching.

Madden, J.J., "What is the Equals Sign?." LATM Journal 5, no.1 (2008) http://www.lamath.org/journal/vol5no1/vol5no1.htm (accessed August 1, 2011). The use of the equals sign and how student understanding of the equals sign needs to broaden.

Merzbach, Uta C., and Carl B. Boyer. A History of Mathematics. 3 rd ed. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2010. This book is huge and dense. I've only read some small sections of it, but I really enjoyed the background information and I intend to keep working my way through it.

Subrmaniam, K., and Rakhi Banerjee. "Teaching Arithmetic and Algebraic Expressions." Eric World's largest digital library of education literature. http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED489552&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno+ED489552 (accessed August 1, 2011). Three teachers' approaches to teaching algebraic expressions.

Comments:

Janet Zegna

May 4, 2014 at 4:30 pm

Strong Foundation = Success in Equations

I appreciated your section on the equal sign. I have been trying to stress to my first grade problem solvers the need to understand what they are doing when solving math problems and to minimize the stress on getting the answer only. They seem all proud of themselves when they can solve math facts but then if you ask them to solve a problem using the same numbers they have no knowledge of where to begin.

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