Making Sense of Mathematics for Teaching: Grades 6-8 (Unifying Topics for an Understanding of Functions, Statistics, and Probability) Illustrated Edition

There are so many things I can highlight about this book! It really is full of treasures for the middle school teacher of mathematics who is seeking a way to enhance or refresh his/her mathematics knowledge (content and pedagogical) for teaching. It appears that the authors carefully selected the mathematics content to cover – not everything – but the right things so that teachers can better focus their efforts on the content that matters the most and content that is really driven by conceptual understanding and not just procedures and operations. For instance, the authors spend time breaking down understanding the area of a trapezoid rather than presenting a formula to be memorized. I really like how each content area is presented through the lens of progression and accompanied by meaningful tasks that teachers can try as they read along. Another thing I appreciated the authors doing is providing classroom video that is aligned with the narrative of the book and that showcases the authors themselves actually teaching what they talk about in the book. This not only adds to the credibility of the book itself, but it supports the reader who asks, “Yeah, but how do I teach tasks like this?” In addition, if readers take time to follow the Task Question Evidence process described in each chapter, respond to questions that accompany each video, and respond to the reflection questions at the end of each chapter, readers will close the book well-equipped to make sense of mathematics for teaching middle school students. Thomasenia Lott Adams, Mathematics Teacher Educator/Researcher, University of Florida

This book is a great resource for teachers, teacher educators, and even parents—anyone who is committed to supporting middle school students to understand mathematics more deeply. The value in this book is that addresses the reader as both a teacher and a learner – it supports middle school teachers to support middle school students to make sense of typically challenging mathematics concepts and operations. For example, the fractions chapter features visual strategies that make sense and build from students’ own ideas about real-world situations. Students create diagrams and equations to represent and model the context of a real situation, and from these experiences, begin to make sense of fraction concepts and operations. Additionally, the book features grade-level progressions that illustrate how students make progress from visual representations to common strategies and procedures in ways they can understand and make sense of every step of the way. Connections to research support the authors’ ideas, and the “TQE” process described in the book equips teachers to analyze students’ learning in ways that can improve teaching practice.

Making Sense of Mathematics for Teaching Grades 6-8 makes you come alive as you read it. Teachers gain an in depth understanding of the math by doing the math, and thinking about it in new and more meaningful ways. The authors have intentionally made reading the book feel like you are sitting right there with them in a training session, with tasks, and explanations that give teachers the deep conceptual understanding we want to foster in our students. Additionally, the visuals and videos allow teachers to see the math and what it should look like when implemented in the classroom. Reading the book for grades 6-8 makes me want to read every book in the entire series!

I love the videos included with the QR codes. I am a math specialist at a middle school and my 3 7th grade teachers watch them with me and they guide my coaching and give the teachers ideas on how they should frame their lessons and discussions. We are trying to get away from the notes, guided practice, homework cycle.

This book is a must have resource for teachers, coaches, and even administrators to gain a better understanding of key topics in middle school mathematics -- Readers experience mathematics as both a learner and a teacher and come to understand multiple strategies to approach the same topic. The “TQE” process: Tasks, Questioning and Evidence makes key aspects of research accessible to teachers.The only reason this review is four stars and not five is because in our book club the binding on all three of our books came unglued and pages fell out! The books were bought at different times so it seems unlikely that it would be a "batch" issue.

This text is a great tool to help teachers, admin, coaches, and all school support staff gain a deeper understanding of the progression of learning through middle school mathematics! The authors do a wonderful job organizing content so that our learning progresses from conceptual towards abstract forms of representing the mathematics. As a teacher, this book will help me guide students to represent their work and their knowledge in multiple forms to truly ensure they understand the math.

This book provides a clear picture of excellent mathematics teaching and support for anyone looking to provide meaningful experiences for middle school students. The conversational tone in the book makes it clear and easy to follow. The practice activities, insights, and classroom videos make this an invaluable resource!

A great resource for mathematics teachers, coaches,supervisors and administrators. I loved all the videos included in the book showing students interacting with the different mathematics tasks. The end-of-chapter reflection questions also helped me think deeper about the mathematics concepts discussed, and how to teach them more effectively.