Mathematics for Elementary Teachers: An Activity Approach

It was a good that I needed

Mathematics For Elementary Teachers: An Activity Approach Pros: Lots of Pictures, Good Quality Cons: Confusing, Lack of Problem Explanations Basics: In the interest of full disclosure, I will openly admit that I did first purchase this book about two years ago, during the spring semester of my Freshman year in college to be exact. However, despite this fact I do not think that this piece of information make me ineligible in any way whatsoever to give this book a great review? Why? Because regardless of when I first used it does not change the quality of service I received from it. Overall, I did not really like this book. As far as textbooks go, it is simply average. It has a lot of pictures and stories that make it interesting to flip through, but it also has a number of different word problems and assignments that are quite confusing with either vague or little explanation of how to solve them. More Information: In simplest words, this book was written to help prospective teachers learn how to teach math in a number of different ways, or rather the goal of the book is to reteach simple concepts that you probably learned in grade school (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, etc.). The reasoning behind this decision is due to the new Common Core Standards the plague public schools, but also to give new teachers the knowledge to teach many different concepts in different ways in case they were to have a struggling student that just wasn’t getting it. This is all great, but the problems start to arise after you get deeper into the pages as the methods that the authors are attempting to teach are not ones that I learned as a child, nor are they methods that my classmates learned in their earlier educations. Because of this, I was unable to use simple intuition to fill in any gaps that might have come up, and since the book doesn’t do a very good job explaining certain concepts I just ended up getting lost and confused. Conclusion: Overall, I wasn’t really impressed by this book. For me, all textbooks have some sort of struggle- that is just the way it is, whether it be having tiny words, no being coherent, being dull… the list goes on and on. However, for this book the struggles it faced, and the inability to really explain the concepts it was attempting to teach (and the lack of clear problem solutions!!!!) was a deal breaker. I fully acknowledge and understand what the authors were trying to accomplish with this book, and I respect that. I feel that understanding different ways to teach different problems is a skill that both old and new teachers alike should absolutely have, I am just not confident in this textbooks ability to do so. Because of that, and the other reason mentioned above, I can only give this textbook two stars.

I thought that it will bring the manipulative kit. The book is not full. I really throw my money.

class book

I ordered this textbook for a college course. The book was supposed to come within a week! It took multiple weeks to get to me! Don’t trust the estimated shipping time! The book itself came as listed! Nice quality and all pages intact!