James Tanton – författare

What mathematics truly matters for student success in middle and high school? Can we really declutter the content while accomplishing more?Too often, secondary mathematics instruction is cluttered with disconnected procedures, jargon, and "drill-and-kill" computational practice. This approach hands students a huge pile of tiny puzzle pieces where students never build or even see the picture of the puzzle on the box, leading to confusion and fragile thinking that unravels the moment a memorized formula is forgotten. This book, co-published with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, draws upon mathematics education research and offers an alternative that prioritizes fundamental understandings.Drawing on over a century of combined experiences, including an NSF-funded project involving over 300 educators, this book identifies five fundamental understandings that serve as a bedrock for student thinking in grades 6–12. By centering on these core ideas, teachers can reduce clutter in both content and student thinking by elevating sense-making and meaning. The authors provide practical examples and show how unleashing student thinking pays off in amazing ways.This book guides teachers and instructional coaches to reimagine the mathematics they teach and to bring it to life in the classroom. The five fundamental understandings act as big puzzle pieces that support students to accomplish bigger things with mathematics. Whether you are a veteran educator or a preservice teacher, this book helps create a robust, mathematical environment in which every student can experience the joy of true sense-making.Book Features:Five Fundamental Understandings: Identifies essential mathematical ideas—including measurement, comparisons, proportional relationships, equivalence, and graphical representations—to help teachers prioritize what matters most for student success.What Really Matters: Describes how the fundamental understandings unleash student thinking.The Math Attic: Recommends the mathematical clutter that can (and should) be de-prioritized in light of the five understandings.High-Profile Expertise: Authored by a team of experts and award-winning educators.

What mathematics truly matters for student success in middle and high school? Can we really declutter the content while accomplishing more?Too often, secondary mathematics instruction is cluttered with disconnected procedures, jargon, and "drill-and-kill" computational practice. This approach hands students a huge pile of tiny puzzle pieces where students never build or even see the picture of the puzzle on the box, leading to confusion and fragile thinking that unravels the moment a memorized formula is forgotten. This book, co-published with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, draws upon mathematics education research and offers an alternative that prioritizes fundamental understandings.Drawing on over a century of combined experiences, including an NSF-funded project involving over 300 educators, this book identifies five fundamental understandings that serve as a bedrock for student thinking in grades 6–12. By centering on these core ideas, teachers can reduce clutter in both content and student thinking by elevating sense-making and meaning. The authors provide practical examples and show how unleashing student thinking pays off in amazing ways.This book guides teachers and instructional coaches to reimagine the mathematics they teach and to bring it to life in the classroom. The five fundamental understandings act as big puzzle pieces that support students to accomplish bigger things with mathematics. Whether you are a veteran educator or a preservice teacher, this book helps create a robust, mathematical environment in which every student can experience the joy of true sense-making.Book Features:Five Fundamental Understandings: Identifies essential mathematical ideas—including measurement, comparisons, proportional relationships, equivalence, and graphical representations—to help teachers prioritize what matters most for student success.What Really Matters: Describes how the fundamental understandings unleash student thinking.The Math Attic: Recommends the mathematical clutter that can (and should) be de-prioritized in light of the five understandings.High-Profile Expertise: Authored by a team of experts and award-winning educators.

Mathematics Galore! Showcases some of the best activities and student outcomes of the St. Mark s Institute of Mathematics and invites you to engage the mathematics yourself! Revel in the delight of deep intellectual play and marvel at the heights to which young scholars can rise. See some great mathematics explained and proved via natural and accessible means. Based on 26 essays ( newsletters ) and eight additional pieces, Mathematics Galore! offers a large sample of mathematical tidbits and treasures, each immediately enticing, and each a gateway to layers of surprising depth and conundrum. Pick and read essays in no particular order and enjoy the mathematical stories that unfold. Be inspired for your courses, your math clubs and your math circles, or simply enjoy for yourself the bounty of research questions and intriguing puzzlers that lie within.

This guide covers the story of trigonometry. It is a swift overview, but it is complete in the context of the content discussed in beginning and advanced high-school courses. The purpose of these notes is to supplement and put into perspective the material of any course on the subject you may have taken or are currently taking. (These notes will be tough going for those encountering trigonometry for the very first time!)

A playful, readable, and thorough guide to precalculus, this book is directed at readers who would like a holistic look at the high school curriculum material on functions and their graphs. Tanton provides a coherent guided tour of exploration and discovery of a rich mathematical landscape. The exploration is presented through problems selected from the history of the Mathematical Association of America's American Mathematics Competition (AMC). Secondary school teachers looking for supplementary and enrichment materials will find this a rich resource, which aligns with national curriculum standards. High school and college calculus and precalculus students will discover an approachable and thought-provoking review, preview, and overview of these central mathematical ideas. Students preparing for the AMC should find it especially helpful. Active reading, with pencil in hand, will result in a deep appreciation and understanding of the properties of functions.James Tanton is the MAA's mathematician-at-large. A research mathematician with experience teaching at both the college and high school levels, he now works to encourage and aid all mathematics instructors to teach--and all mathematics students to learn-joyously and effectively.

This book is a collection of 34 curiosities, each a quirky and delightful gem of mathematics and each a shining example of the joy and surprise that mathematics can bring. Intended for the general math enthusiast, each essay begins with an intriguing puzzle, which either springboards into or unravels to become a wondrous piece of thinking. The essays are self-contained and rely only on tools from high-school mathematics (with only a few pieces that ever-so-briefly brush up against high-school calculus).The gist of each essay is easy to pick up with a cursory glance--the reader should feel free to simply skim through some essays and dive deep into others. This book is an invitation to play with mathematics and to explore its wonders. Much joy awaits!In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.