Customer Reviews

What Successful Math Teachers Do, Grades 6-12: 79 Research-Based Strategies for the Standards-Based Classroom

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This book is essentially the same as "Tips for the Mathematics Teacher". Unfortunately, I did not know that before I purchased both online. The difference between the two books appears to be that the "Successful Math Teacher" also contains the NCTM standards that each strategy is supporting. Between the two, I prefer "What Successful Teachers Do". The book is very interesting and practical. Each strategy is supported by research and practical applications. I was happy to see that I was already using many of these strategies already and there are a few I plan to integrate into my teaching in the fall!

If you have read "The First Days of School" or "Tools for Teaching", but then thought to yourself, "yeah, but what about in a math class?", this book sort of answers that question. Most of the material has little to do with being a math teacher and more to do with being a teacher. Classroom management, teaching techniques such as graphic organizers, student learning through inquiry: these are all great teaching techniques. The examples and applications provided are of varying quality, and sometimes the authors even tell you to look at another resource for more detailed information! In this sense, the text is more like an index of education research with easily digested summaries. Some may enjoy the brevity, some may find it rather annoying.

The format of the book will appeal to math teachers. Each topic is structured the same way, although some topics do not even have the application piece. Let's think for a moment about what is being offered: 79 topics over 178 pages (the rest are refs and the index) - just over 2 pages a topic! Not much depth to each topic, is there?

I am a high school math teacher with 3 years of experience, so I am not a new teacher, but I'm not an experienced teacher either. This might have been more helpful as a 1st year teacher. On the other hand, there are so many topics, it might easily create some anxiety in a new teacher that there are so many things to think about! I would say the best way to use the book is to look up topics of specific concern to you, read the section, then see if there are specific references or other books that address that particular area. This requires some humility and self-reflection. Often we don't see our own weaknesses. Perhaps the best way to find weaknesses would be to survey your own students, then read up on a related topic and see what changes you can make.

I found the examples for pedagogy related topics particularly disappointing. Maybe Posamentier's other books cover that area in more detail? I was quite excited to peruse this book. Now I'm glad I checked it out from the library.

Overall, useful but short snippets on all aspects of teaching. If you're looking for more ideas on how to shake up your pedagogy, look elsewhere.

This book is a terrific guide for an inexperienced teacher like myself. The strategies are provacative yet simple to employ. The authors also point out some of the "pitfalls" in implementing the strategies. All in all, I really like the book because it gets right to the heart of classroom instruction and does not dwell on educational theories, just practical hints that are gleaned from them. I have already improved my teaching after implementing just a few of the tips. I recommend this book highly.

Alfred Posamentier, one of my great heroes, and Daniel Jaye have collaborated to produce a discussion of "79 Research-based Strategies for the Standards-based Classroom", which is the subtitle of the book, What SUCCESSFUL Math Teachers Do, Grades 6-12.What SUCCESSFUL Math Teachers Do, Grades 6-12

Posamentier is dean of the School of Education and Professor of Mathematics Education of the City College of the City University of New York. He has written a number of books that inspire teachers and students to approach Math with a sense of wonder. Jaye is the assistant Principal for Mathematics at Stuyvesant High School, a school for gifted students in New York City.

The book has 6 chapters:

1. Managing Your Classroom
2. Enhancing Teaching Techniques
3. Facilitating Student Learning
4. Assessing Student Progress
5. Teaching Problem Solving
6. Considering Social Aspects in Teaching Mathematics

Additionally, there's a resource section where the authors list over 100 topics for classroom exploration.

Each chapter consists of a number of teaching strategies. Each strategy is methodically broken down into:

1. Title of the Strategy
2. What the Research Says. This section refers to and describes specific studies that support the strategy being discussed.
3. Teaching to the NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) Standards. This is an important section in that it explains how employing a particular strategy meets one or more specific principles or standards of the NCTM.
4. Classroom Applications. This section explains and lists ways to implement the strategy in the classroom.
5. Precautions and Pitfalls. This section alerts teachers about potential obstacles to realizing the goal of the strategy plus recommends ways to avoid these traps.
6. Sources. These are the references to the research behind the strategies.

The book is comprehensive, well organized, and thoroughly researched. Although I'm not a teacher or student these strategies all seem very valuable to me.

Some of my favorite strategies include:

1. Strategy 16: Find out about your students' motivation regarding mathematics, and use that knowledge to refine your instruction.
2. Strategy 19. Praise mistakes! This strategy addresses the shame and anxiety that many students feel in the classroom.
3. Strategy 33: To reduce math anxiety, focus on both the thoughts and the emotions of the students.
4. Strategy 63: Emphasize the general principles that underly solving specific types of problems.
5. Strategy 69: Find out about your students' families and how their values and practices might affect students' attitudes and performance in mathematics.

Posamentier and Jaye clearly know what they're talking about, both having spent considerable amounts of time in the trenches and both caring very deeply for the success of their students. Their competence shows in the tying together of strategy, research, and application in support of NCTM guidelines. Their caring shows in the overall tone of the book.

I highly recommend this book to all teachers, coaches, and tutors. As a Math tutor and mentor I found a number of important considerations to incorporate in my work with students.

The significance of this book lies in its timely publication in the era of educational reform that aims at standardizing institutionalized education. Ensuring that the government delivers what it promises, in the field of shaping the minds of the new generations, has gained growing emphasis in many nations across the Globe. This book devotes its entire contents to 79 strategies of executing well-tested and established standards for teaching mathematics in high school.

Compared to Harry K. Wong's "The First Days Of School", the current authors have contributed plenty of practical and theoretical research yet delegated their book's layout to a publisher with little concern of the friendly readability or attractive style of display of the book material. Relatively speaking, Wong relied merely on his personal experience yet managed to produce more attractive material display with his self-publishing and dedicated style.

On the subject matter, this book covers six, logically connected, aspects of teaching high school mathematics. The book starts with the strategies of "managing" the classroom environment and proceeds to strategies on the processes of "delivery" through teaching techniques, "reception" in student learning, and "measuring" through assessing students' progress. The four-process strategies are discussed in the first four chapters. Chapter five then refines the "delivery" process yet on problem solving, while chapter six refines the "reception" process yet on the social aspects of the receptors.

On the six aspects of teaching, the authors stuck to a simple and consistent methodology in reconciling research materials with the standards and principals of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and in applying such strategies to the classroom. The authors then discussed the precautions and pitfalls and followed by a reference source on each strategy. Extensive list of references is also enclosed at the end of the book. On each proposed teaching strategy, the authors answer four fundamental questions:

-- What trends were observed in experimental research?
-- What standards are adopted by the NCTM?
-- How to utilize those trends and standards in practical teaching?
-- What precautions should be taken/pitfalls should be expected in doing so?

On the book's outline, dryness of material display and lack of emphasizing tactics could have been avoided with minimal improvement. For example, the seventy nine strategies were listed in the table of contents in the form of lengthy sentences that spanned two lines or more. Such lengthy description of the 79 strategies renders their recollection or dissemination quite laboring. Strategy number 19 was the only one depicted in two words: "Praise Mistakes". I would rather truncate the four line description of strategy number 41, in the table of contents, for example, into few words such as: "Structuring Homework Assignment", which should also include strategies number 42 and 43. Had the 79 strategies been grouped under the six chapters, as sub-items, there would have been logical connection between their numbering and purpose. Six grouped strategies are less overwhelming than 79, in my opinion.

Although each strategy is well contained in few pages, there seems to be no use of modern font graying, bolding, or italicizing that emphasizes the main concepts in many long paragraphs. For example, in strategy number 46, emphasis could have been added by bolding the examples of high-level thinking objectives versus the low-level thinking objectives in the lengthy paragraph on research. Similar emphasis could have been made in the paragraph on the NCTM standards, yet on the most significant thought in that lengthy paragraph. Such modern techniques of enhancing book's readability not only extend the longevity and marketability of the publication, but also facilitate referencing and progression of thoughts on the attended topics.

On the book's main objective, it conveys the authors' emphasis on the fact that teaching is an evolving process that is founded on concerted efforts to understand the multiple variables that influence the management, delivery, reception, and assessment endeavors of the institutionalized educational process. The authors' work has further evolved into a newer one, "Exemplary Practices for Secondary Math Teachers", and picked a third contributor, in their course of developing their craft. One must however note that the current two authors have not delineated the specific contributions of each one of them. That leaves the reader uncertain on whose ideas have dominated certain aspects of the book than others. The newer title also addresses the practice of teaching rather than the teacher, which narrows the gap between the authors and the readers.

Putting substance over form, however, the 79 strategies of teaching high school math are grouped concisely in an appropriate book size and supported by classroom application that lend the busy and consumed teachers a helping hand in adhering to the professional standards and in furthering their research and bettering their craft.

What Successful Math Teachers Do, Grade 6-12 outlines the best practices that all mathematics teachers should engage in. Unfortunately, the percent of them doing it is quite small. I should know because I've taken/attended lot of math classes and observed the teachers' practices. They've been universally the same: lecture, write on board, answer questions, and display an avoidance of inquiry as to why. All notes are copied ad verbatim from the book, and the scope of coverage of the topics is very narrow and at worst impractical. The limited exposure is very dangerous and harmful to nearly all mathematics students because they do not realize they can just walk into any bookstore and take a look through a library of mathematics books published. Then, if they took a look at several of them inside, the information would seem a lot more clear and deeper than it would ordinarily be in a regular, thick, and expensive textbook that they are seemingly forced to rely on. If they spent more time doing that, they would at some point, as it is hard to believe as it sounds, actually enjoy it. I think one big problem after looking at all of the strategies in What Successful Math Teachers Do, Grade 6-12 is the lack of time. Two hours or more in a block to teach a math class two times or more a week is optimal to get the most out of the students; however, 40 minutes or less a day is quite impossible. One could try, but let's face it: the lack of lengthened continuity in one lecture is simply the chief problem. I know it that much because I am a practicing mathematics teacher with a block schedule, and I can safely say that it works the best. All of the strategies outlined are exactly correct and to the point, and I've agreed with just about everything. In fact, I've already practiced many of them before I read the book because it makes sense and it is effective and practical. One of the most telling points is how lecturing students about specific word problems does not work. I learned the hard way about it, but I eventually got the lessons worked out by doing hands-on group based activity. After four months of it, I knew my students were the best prepared and most knowledgeable compared to their peers. The best part of the story, I've gotten an enormous amount of success with the students by doing the nontraditional way. None of the success will come if the several simple rules aren't followed: do the work, put in a lot of effort, and keep up with it. Take away them; the student has then absolutely no chance. Another flawed aspect of the book is after a gist is presented for a strategy, the authors refer the reader to a source, but it is titled in a foreign language. So, I would assume the whole source is unreadable for the English readers. One of the best parts of the book is the list of math topics at the end. Very nice. I will be certainly taking advantage of many of them as I can although I've had the students doing them prior to me reading the book. All in all, it is recommended all mathematics teachers read What Successful Math Teachers Do, Grade 6-12, but many of them won't because they are too content with mediocrity. There you go: I've just described a national problem in mathematics achievement.

This book is full of good strategies, hints, and classroom applications. The topics are related to NCTM standards and are actually practical and actionable. The text includes precautions and pitfalls. It is brief and to the point; the price is definitely right and considerably less than a typical educational text, which makes it well worth the buy. It does have the same drawbacks as most educational books: at times the recommendations are a little too vague and open-ended. It's a great reference for any math teacher's personal library.