Next fall I will be teaching Math for Elementary Teachers again. I haven’t taught this class since winter of 2007, so I haven’t extensively blogged about resources for this class. For those of you who teach this class – you have this to look forward to.
For several years, I have used the book, The Glass Wall: Why Mathematics Can Seem Difficult as supplementary reading for Math for Elementary Teachers. I’ve found that the students found it to give them insight about why they and their students have difficulty learning math. Reading the book makes them think about things like notation, abstraction, and context.
When I taught with this book the first time, I wrote a study guide for the students. Some of the questions are just to verify that they have done the readings and thought about the ideas. However there are also questions in the study guide that correlate directly with the material that is typically taught in the course (like alternate-base number systems).
I offered The Glass Wall Study Guide to Teacher’s College Press to consider publishing as a supplement to the book, but they weren’t interested. It seems silly to leave the Study Guide sitting on my desktop when some of you might find it a good supplement to your classes, so I’m just putting it out there (here’s the link) with a share-alike non-commercial license. Use it if you’d like. In addition, there is a file full of in-class group questions (here’s that link).
Put the study guide in your online course shell, make copies for students, have students make their own copies – with my blessings. However, if your bookstore is going to make copies of the study guide to sell, then the bookstore is going to have to contact me for permission.
