Written in a user-friendly, conversational style, the fourth edition of this groundbreaking text helps pre-service and in-service mathematics teachers build the comfort and confidence they need to begin talking to children about fractions and ratios, distilling complex ideas and translating research into usable ideas for the classroom. For two decades, Teaching Fractions and Ratios for Understanding has pushed readers beyond the limits of their current understanding of fractions and rational numbers, challenging them to refine and explain their thinking without falling back on rules and procedures they have relied on throughout their lives. All of the material offered in the book has been used with students, and is presented so that readers can see the brilliance of their insights as well as the issues that challenge their understanding. Each chapter includes children's strategies and samples of student work for teacher analysis, as well as activities for practicing each thinking strategy, designed to be solved without rules or algorithms, using reasoning alone. The fourth edition of this popular text has been updated throughout and includes new examples of student work, updated artwork, and more. As with previous editions, an equally valuable component of this text is the companion book MORE! Teaching Fractions and Ratios for Understanding (2012), a supplement that is not merely an answer key but a resource that provides the scaffolding for the groundbreaking approach to fraction and ratio instruction explored here. MORE! includes in-depth discussions of selected problems in the main text, supplementary activities, Praxis preparation questions, more student work, and templates for key manipulatives.

Written in a user-friendly, conversational style, the fourth edition of this groundbreaking text helps pre-service and in-service mathematics teachers build the comfort and confidence they need to begin talking to children about fractions and ratios, distilling complex ideas and translating research into usable ideas for the classroom. For two decades, Teaching Fractions and Ratios for Understanding has pushed readers beyond the limits of their current understanding of fractions and rational numbers, challenging them to refine and explain their thinking without falling back on rules and procedures they have relied on throughout their lives. All of the material offered in the book has been used with students, and is presented so that readers can see the brilliance of their insights as well as the issues that challenge their understanding. Each chapter includes children's strategies and samples of student work for teacher analysis, as well as activities for practicing each thinking strategy, designed to be solved without rules or algorithms, using reasoning alone. The fourth edition of this popular text has been updated throughout and includes new examples of student work, updated artwork, and more. As with previous editions, an equally valuable component of this text is the companion book MORE! Teaching Fractions and Ratios for Understanding (2012), a supplement that is not merely an answer key but a resource that provides the scaffolding for the groundbreaking approach to fraction and ratio instruction explored here. MORE! includes in-depth discussions of selected problems in the main text, supplementary activities, Praxis preparation questions, more student work, and templates for key manipulatives.

More is not an answer key but a resource that provides the scaffolding for the groundbreaking approach to fraction and ratio instruction presented in its companion text, Teaching Fractions and Ratios. Keeping the focus on the reasoning needed to properly understand and teach rational numbers, More shows teachers how to engage in powerful ways of thinking so that they can, in turn, enhance the mathematical education of their students. Like its companion text, More has been heavily expanded and reorganized, including even more student work, templates for key manipulatives, and an emphasis on applications to everyday life. Based on the content chapters in Teaching Fractions and Ratios, each chapter includes: In-depth Discussions of selected problems and their solutions. Supplementary Activities and a collection of challenging problems involving fractions. Praxis Preparation Questions geared to the content of each chapter.

This book is the result of a conference sponsored by the Educational Testing Service and the University of Wisconsin's National Center for Research in Mathematical Sciences Education. The purpose of the conference was to facilitate the work of a group of scholars whose interests included the assessment of higher-order understandings and processes in foundation-level (pre-high school) mathematics. Discussions focused on such issues as the purposes of assessment, guidelines for producing and scoring "real-life" assessment activities, and the meanings of such terms as "deeper and higher-order understanding," "cognitive objectives," and "authentic mathematical activities." Assessment was viewed as a critical component of complex, dynamic, and continually adapting educational systems. During the time that the chapters in this book were being written, sweeping changes in mathematics education were being initiated in response to powerful recent advances in technology, cognitive psychology, and mathematics, as well as to numerous public demands for educational reform. These changes have already resulted in significant reappraisals of what it means to understand mathematics, of the nature of mathematics teaching and learning, and of the real-life situations in which mathematics is useful. The challenge was to pursue assessment-related initiatives that are systematically valid, in the sense that they work to complement and enhance other improvements in the educational system rather than act as an impediment to badly needed curriculum reforms. To address these issues, most chapters in this book focus on clarifying and articulating the goals of assessment and instruction, and they stress the content of assessment above its mode of delivery. Computer- or portfolio-based assessments are interpreted as means to ends, not as ends in themselves. Assessment is conceived as an ongoing documentation process, seamless with instruction, whose quality hinges upon its ability to provide complete and appropriate information as needed to inform priorities in instructional decision making. This book tackles some of the most complicated issues related to assessment, and it offers fresh perspectives from leaders in the field--with the hope that the ultimate consumer in the instruction/assessment enterprise, the individual student, will reclaim his or her potential for self-directed mathematics learning.

More is not an answer key but a resource that provides the scaffolding for the groundbreaking approach to fraction and ratio instruction presented in its companion text, Teaching Fractions and Ratios. Keeping the focus on the reasoning needed to properly understand and teach rational numbers, More shows teachers how to engage in powerful ways of thinking so that they can, in turn, enhance the mathematical education of their students. Like its companion text, More has been heavily expanded and reorganized, including even more student work, templates for key manipulatives, and an emphasis on applications to everyday life. Based on the content chapters in Teaching Fractions and Ratios, each chapter includes: In-depth Discussions of selected problems and their solutions. Supplementary Activities and a collection of challenging problems involving fractions. Praxis Preparation Questions geared to the content of each chapter.