Facilitators Guide How The Brain Learns Mathematics

The text offers a unique and simplified four-step model for teaching mathematics to PreK--12 students that helps teachers consistently relate what learners experience in the classroom to concrete, real-world applications.

Guide your staff to a clear understanding of cognitive research and its practical applications for the classroom! This essential training guide to the new third edition of David Sousas How the Brain Learns, Third Edition provides staff developers and turnkey teachers with the tools necessary to facilitate a workshop or study group based on the bestselling book. Chapter-by-chapter topics focus on brain research that relates to teaching and learning and how this research can be translated into practical classroom strategies, and explore in depth Basic brain facts Information processing Memory, retention, and learning Transfer of knowledge Hemispheric preferences and teaching to the whole brain Creativity Higher-order thinking skills Key activities from the book include engaging in action research, determining sensory preferences, developing mnemonics, using metaphors to enhance knowledge transfer, making a concept map, putting the arts into lessons, differentiating complexity and difficulty, and putting lesson components together. Highlights for the facilitator include Chapter summaries Supplemental information Discussion questions Timed activities Journal writing exercises Sample workshop agendas Sample workshop evaluation form The Facilitators Guide to How the Brain Learns, Third Edition, helps you effectively lead others through dialogue, reflection, and application of Sousas work in a number of different settings. Now you can help guide your faculty and colleagues to a better understanding and application of the most current cognitive research available for educators!

Learn how the brain processes mathematical concepts and why some students develop math anxiety! David A. Sousa discusses the cognitive mechanisms for learning mathematics and the environmental and developmental factors that contribute to mathematics difficulties. This award-winning text examines: Children’s innate number sense and how the brain develops an understanding of number relationships Rationales for modifying lessons to meet the developmental learning stages of young children, preadolescents, and adolescents How to plan lessons in PreK–12 mathematics Implications of current research for planning mathematics lessons, including discoveries about memory systems and lesson timing Methods to help elementary and secondary school teachers detect mathematics difficulties Clear connections to the NCTM standards and curriculum focal points

To reach all your math students, use your brain—and theirs, too! The bestselling and award-winning first edition of How the Brain Learns Mathematics quickly revolutionized math teaching and learning. The second edition takes readers to the next level with new brain-friendly strategies backed by the latest research from education and neuroscience and even more ways to seamlessly incorporate what you learn about your students’ developing minds into your math classroom. In this essential resource, you’ll discover the cognitive mechanisms involved in processing mathematical operations, while exploring the environmental and developmental factors that create learning difficulties. How the Brain Learns Mathematics also presents a unique and simplified four-step teaching model that relates students’ classroom experience to concrete, real-world applications. Features of the new edition include More strategies for motivating adolescents Integration of the arts into mathematics instruction New information on how technology affects attention and memory Expanded sections on number sense and ELL instruction More than 160 new references and a greatly expanded index for readers’ convenience No matter what grade you teach, your students are growing and changing. Understanding how their brains work is the key to reaching every one of them—and making math a positive part of their lives for years to come. "David Sousa’s book is a wonderfully readable presentation of how neuroscience and cognitive psychology can inform the teaching of mathematics in elementary and secondary schools. Sousa engages his readers intellectually with recent research on the brain and mathematics learning, and avoids pat answers where the evidence is suggestive rather than conclusive. The book is a valuable text for teachers who want a deeper insight into thinking processes behind the learning and teaching of math." —Robert E. Slavin, Director, Center for Research and Reform in Education Johns Hopkins University "Teaching mathematics without having read this book is like trying to master tennis without a coach. Sousa′s book is a tour de force: It builds a solid bridge from cognitive neuroscience to daily classroom practice. Every teacher of mathematics will benefit from this well-researched, well-organized, thoughtful, and practical approach to making math instruction align with how brains learn." —Spencer Kagan, Publisher/Professional Developer Kagan Publishing and Professional Development

Today's classrooms embrace students of all abilities, and David A. Sousa's latest work provides the most up-to-date information and insights on how to work effectively with each one of them.

Explore a more brain-compatible way of teaching mathematics with this DVD.

Facilitating mathematical investigations with teachers will help improve their teaching! Because a student's learning depends so heavily on teacher quality, districts and state departments of education, colleges, and universities are called upon to strengthen their teacher preparation and professional development programs. Yet college mathematics courses are often criticized for being disconnected from the mathematics that teachers are asked to teach. The Facilitator's Guide to Ways to Think About Mathematics is designed to close this gap. National and state standards and frameworks suggest that mathematical investigation, problem solving, and exploratory learning should play a central role in mathematics lessons. It is therefore necessary for teachers to experience mathematical explorations as learners themselves, which places new demands on professional development facilitators and preservice educators. This guide provides resources for facilitators to use while they are planning and implementing courses and workshops using Ways to Think About Mathematics. This guide and the accompanying CD-ROM contain: Commentary on the activities Pedagogical suggestions (materials sequencing, promoting active participation, adapting to the needs of particular teachers) Various solution strategies Additional reading and problems tied to the content of the main text Sample solutions for all problems and discussion questions Ways to Think About Mathematics and the Facilitator's Guide will provide staff developers, preservice educators, and math department chairs with all the necessary tools to provide high-quality staff development in secondary mathematics. The materials were funded by the National Science Foundation and successfully field-tested in a wide variety of professional development and preservice settings. CD-ROM is PC and Mac compatible and not sold separately.

The system won’t do it for us. But we have each other. In The Imperfect and Unfinished Math Teacher: A Journey to Reclaim Our Professional Growth, master storyteller Chase Orton offers a vulnerable and courageous grassroots guide that leads K-12 math teachers through a journey to cultivate a more equitable, inclusive, and cohesive culture of professionalism for themselves...what he calls professional flourishment. The book builds from two bold premises. First, that as educators, we are all naturally imperfect and unfinished, and growth should be our constant goal. Second, that the last 40 years of top-down PD efforts in mathematics have rarely supplied teachers with what they need to equitably grow their practice and foster classrooms that are likewise empowered, inclusive, and cohesive. With gentle humanity, this book inspires teachers to break down silos, observe each others’ classrooms, interrogate their own biases, and put students at the center of everything they do in the math classroom. This book: Weaves raw and authentic stories—both personal and those from other educators—into a relatable and validating narrative Offers interactive opportunities to self-reflect, build relationships, seek new vantage on our teaching by observing others’ classrooms and students, and share and listen to other’s stories and experiences Asks teachers to give and accept grace as they work collaboratively to better themselves and the system from within, so that they can truly serve each of their students authentically and equitably Implementing the beliefs and actions in this book will position teachers to become more active partners in each other’s professional growth so that they can navigate the obstacles in their professional landscape with renewed focus and a greater sense of individual and collective efficacy. It equips teachers—and by extension, their students—to chart their own course and author their own equitable and joyful mathematical and professional stories.