Teaching Math, Science, and Technology in Schools Today

Dennis Adams is a former Fulbright Scholar who taught elementary school and also higher education at the University of Minnesota, University of Maine, and McGill University in Montreal. He did graduate work at Harvard University and has a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He is the author of more than twenty books and more than a hundred journal articles on various educational topics.Mary Hamm has taught at Ohio State University and the University of Colorado. More recently, she has been teaching at San Francisco State University. She has worked on both the math and science standards and has published more than a dozen books and eighty journal articles on these subjects.

In this clear and concise book, Adams and Hamm demonstrate how collaborative inquiry and problem solving strategies can be used to engage both eager and reluctant learners in math, science, and technology. The book provides examples of activities that can be used in K–8 classrooms and shows how the activities can be used to differentiate instruction for learners at different ability levels. The activities covered include a variety of math content, such as numbers and operations, fractions, patterns and functions, algebra, geometry, and measurement. It also has some activities to enhance students' science inquiry and process skills, such as observing, comparing, hypothesizing, experimenting, and communicating. The suggested activities are replicable in elementary classrooms. Throughout the book, the authors argue for a learner-centered pedagogy that encourages students to think creatively and constructively. The book has five chapters, and each chapter has a list of questions at the end, which can provide guidance for teachers and prospective teachers to engage students in mathematics and science learning. This is a valuable resource for mathematics and science educators. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate and research collections.

• PrefaceChapter 1: Helping All Students Learn About Math and ScienceChapter 2: Creative and Inventive Thinking: Collaborative Inquiry, Open-Ended Problem Solving, and InnovationChapter 3: Mathematical Problem Solving: Reasoning and Collaborating in an Age of DataChapter 4: Science Involving All Students with Active Involvement and Collaborative InquiryChapter 5: Technology: The Powerful Possibility of Tools