Customer Reviews

Problem Solving Strategies: Crossing the River with Dogs and Other Mathematical Adventures

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I had to purchase this book for a Class I was taking at Sam Houston State University. It is an excellent book to help learn problem solving strategies. Although, I am an elementary education major with a math specialization and had to take this class, I would recommend this book to anyone who is planning to teach grades 1 through 12. This book was designed for middle school grades, but could be adapted to any grade level. Problem solving is so important in mathematics.

Six years ago I actually took Problem Solving from Ken Johnson, one of the authors, at Sierra College. Problem solving became a whole new and exciting recreation from then on. I would have to credit that miracle to the class's amazing teacher and the book he wrote. I have had hundreds of teachers in my life, and am a teacher myself, yet I have never met any teacher that was as gifted as Ken Johnson. His talent is clearly evident in his written work as well. (PS, how many people would it take to give this book 396 thumbs up?)

This book taught me one thing I didn't know (finite differences -a lot less strain on me to find formulas and equations) and gave me challenging problems.

I borrowed this resource from another teacher during my student teaching as a math teacher. Now I am in my first year teaching full time and looking to buy my own copy--I don't know what to do without it! It is a great resource for problems for many age and ability levels. The problems are interesting, use a variety of well-established strategies, and make problem solving fun! A great book.

I ordered this book for a class I was taking for a required class for a graduate class at Mercer University. I actually really enjoyed the methods that were introduced in this book. I would recommend it for any teacher that encourages students to work through problems. I have found that these math problem solving methods can be applied in other subjects.

I found this book on Amazon and splurged. It was worth every penny. I have taught this as a "problem-solving" course for my 7th and 8th grade students in Canada. They love it ~ we would spend some time in each chapter, and as we progressed through each one, I would post the strategy on the classroom wall, so they could visually see and refer to the strategies we had already addressed. It also provided some teachable opportunities to teach my students metric-imperial conversion with the unit analysis chapter. I have recommended it to other math teachers, especially those teaching enriched math.

If every math teacher used this book, we'd have a world full of students who are comfortable doing math problems.