Information covering important topics for today's educators and parents. Math by all means. The unit is designed to help students develop spatial understanding as they manipulate shapes, fold and cut paper, create and then sort shapes, and design patchwork patterns. The authors believe that children must develop intuition and understanding about the properties of shapes, how shapes relate to one another, and what happens when shapes are combined or divided. Instruction is designed to encourage children to construct their own understanding of concepts by exploring the same idea in different contexts, verbalizing their theories and ideas, confronting their confusions, and refining their theories, moving to more complete understandings over time.
Writing is incorporated as an integral part of childrens mathematics learning.
The whole class lessons are designed to provide a common set of introductory experiences on which children can build their understanding of the unit topic. Menu activities allow children to work independently, whether in pairs, groups, or individually. These activities do not build on each other, but rather pose problems, set up situations, and ask questions that help children interact with the unit topic. Woven through each unit are descriptions of what happened when the material was taught to an actual class at the appropriate grade level. These vignettes provide a view of how the lessons were organized, how children reacted, and how a teacher responded in one classroom, but are not intended as a standard of what should happen.