Comprehending Math: Adapting Reading Strategies to Teach Mathematics, K-6 [Paperback]

Arthur Hyde (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 032500949X | ISBN-13: 978-0325009490 | Publication Date: September 15, 2006

For those who devour Comprehending Math as I did, their teaching will be clearer, bolder, more connected. And for the ultimate beneficiaries, they will have a chance to understand just how integrally our world is connected.
Ellin Oliver Keene, author of Mosaic of Thought

No matter the content area, students need to develop clear ways of thinking about and understanding what they learn. But this kind of conceptual thinking seems more difficult in math than in language arts and social studies. Fortunately we now know how to help kids understand more about mathematics than ever before, and in Comprehending Math you'll find out that much of math's conceptual difficulty can be alleviated by adapting what we have learned from research on language and cognition.

In Comprehending Math Arthur Hyde (coauthor of the popular Best Practice) shows you how to adapt some of your favorite and most effective reading comprehension strategies to help your students with important mathematical concepts. Emphasizing problem solving, Hyde and his colleagues demonstrate how to build into your practice math-based variations of:

• K - W - L
• visualizing
• asking questions
• inferring
• predicting
• making connections
• determining importance
• synthesizing

He then presents a practical way to "braid" together reading comprehension, math problemsolving, and thinking to improve math teaching and learning. Elaborating on this braided model of approach to problem solving, he shows how it can support planning as well as instruction.

Comprehending Math is based on current cognitive research and features more than three dozen examples that range from traditional story problems to open-ended or extended-response problems and mathematical tasks. It gives you step-by-step ideas for instruction and smart, specific advice on planning strategy-based teaching.

Help students do math and get it at the same time. Read Comprehending Math, use its adaptations of familiar language arts strategies, and discover how deeply students can understand math concepts and how well they can use that knowledge to solve problems.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Arthur Hyde is the author or coauthor of the Heinemann titles Understanding Middle School Mathematics; Comprehending Math; Best Practice, Fourth Edition; and Mathwise. A professor of mathematics education at National-Louis University , he received its Excellence in Teaching award. While teaching high school mathematics in Philadelphia , he developed a variety of creative methods for teaching math. He also obtained a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from the University of Pennsylvania , where he later was Associate Director of Teacher Preparation. He continues to work frequently in elementary and middle school classrooms and conducts extensive professional development programs on mathematics and problem solving in Chicago and its surrounding school districts.

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Heinemann (September 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 032500949X
• ISBN-13: 978-0325009490
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #268,568 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Arthur Hyde is a long-time author and coauthor of professional books that teachers rely on every day. As a content-area expert in mathematics, he has collaborated with Harvey "Smokey" Daniels and Steven Zemelman on Best Practice: Today's Standards for Teaching and Learning in America's Schools. His work has frequently combined familiar best practices from other disciplines and suggested how they can improve instruction in math. For example, in his bestselling Comprhending Math: Adapting Reading Strategies to Teach Mathematics, K-6, he showed the powerful applications that the comprehension strategies popularized by Ellin Keene and Stephanie Harvey have for math.

Art previously taught high school mathematics in Philadelphia, where he developed a variety of creative methods for teaching math. These experiences, led him to many of the ideas behind his books Mathwise: Teaching Mathematical Thinking and Problem Solving and Understanding Middle School Mathematics: Cool Problems to Get Students Thinking and Connecting. He also obtained a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from the University of Pennsylvania , where he later was Associate Director of Teacher Preparation. Art continues to work frequently in elementary and middle school classrooms and conducts extensive professional development programs on mathematics and problem solving in Chicago and its surrounding school districts. Art is also a professor of mathematics education at National-Louis University, where he has received its Excellence in Teaching award.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Linking reading comprehension strategies with math instruction, January 6, 2008

By 

Deb Guthrie (St. Paul, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Comprehending Math: Adapting Reading Strategies to Teach Mathematics, K-6 (Paperback)

This is a great resource for linking reading comprehenshion strategies with math instruction. Vingettes of lessons for each strategy are provided. This book is a "must have" for elementary teachers!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Book and Easy to Follow, November 11, 2010

By 

Kim - See all my reviews

This review is from: Comprehending Math: Adapting Reading Strategies to Teach Mathematics, K-6 (Paperback)

In Comprehending Math, the author, uses reading comprehension strategies in order to get students to be the ones making the connections and asking questions in mathematics through "The Braid Model of Problem Solving." Throughout chapters 2,3 and 4, he explains pieces of "The Braid Model of Problem Solving," and adding on to this model in each chapter. The chapters following use the model to explain examples with student work.
The most useful piece of information encompasses the entire book and that is this idea of 'braiding' together language, thinking and mathematics to develop "The Braid Model of Problem Solving." And there are actual outlines given at the end of Chapters 2, 3 and 4 that are very useful, and even points out in the outline what was newly acquired from that chapter.
I really liked that I was able to find an entire book focusing on math comprehension, instead of it just being one of the other disciplines in an example of reading comprehension in other disciplines. I think if you need some help in trying to find ways to get students motivated into thinking about mathematics, then this is an excellent book because it doesn't say this is how you must teach this topic and that topic, instead it provides a helpful outline that could even be interpreted, not only in K-6, but in 7-12 as well.
There was one thing that I found this book to be lacking in and that was examples on how this concept of 'braiding' is used with English language learners. While this was missing, it didn't detract from the flow of book from one chapter to the next; so you could sit down and read the entire 186 pages in one sitting like I did.