Overview

'This is an excellent book which no mathematics department should be without. Its 50 self-contained lessons offer amusing, fascinating and mathematically worthwhile tasks which are supported by excellent teacher notes. Most books are not worth recommending but this is different.' Paul Andrews, Senior Lecturer in Mathematics Education, Universityof Cambridge ‘This collection is a ‘must have' for every teacher who wants to inspire students to be excited by mathematics, yet not stray too far from core topics. Every lesson contains key insights into mathematics, using ideas, links and contexts which are mysterious, fun, silly, bizarre, practical and historical.' Anne Watson, Reader in Mathematics Education, University of Oxford ‘When the occasion demands it, most maths teachers can pull out an all-singing-all-dancing lesson or two that are more or less guaranteed to go well. These can come in handy for job interviews or during inspections. But such lessons tend to require an exceptional amount of preparation or are excessively demanding to deliver and are not sustainable in the real world, where a teacher may have to teach eight or more lessons in a day. For most of us, normal teaching life probably exists nearer the other end of the maths lesson spectrum, with relatively routine expository lessons. This sort of lesson requires little preparation and is easy to teach, but tends to be uninspiring for learners and unsatisfying for the teacher.The fifty lessons in this book aim somewhere in between these two extremes: they require only a few minutes' preparation time yet, I hope, rise above the commonplace. They are the sort of lessons you could teach eight of in a day, rather than eight of in your career!' From the introduction Related resources can be found at the companion website www.50maths.com.

Full Product Details

Author:   Colin Foster
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
Dimensions:   Width: 21.00cm , Height: 1.00cm , Length: 29.70cm
Weight:   0.386kg
ISBN:  

9781847061027

ISBN 10:   1847061028
Pages:   120
Publication Date:   10 August 2008
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Language:   English

Table of Contents

Introduction 1 A Prime Example of A Code 2 A Single Fold 3 A Single Fold Again 4 Benford's Law 5 Can We Play A Game? 6 Catch 22 7 Colourful Expressions 8 Coordinate Transformations 9 Digital Roots 10 Dot To Dot 11 Every Number From One Letter 12 Every Possible Answer 13 Farey Sequences 14 Fermi Questions 15 Fibonacci Grids 16 Fractional Dice 17 Happy Days 18 Harshad Numbers 19 I Don't Believe It! 20 If A Tree Falls In A Forest ... 21 In The Money 22 In The Money Again 23 It's Snowing! 24 Lattice-Point Triangles 25 Logarithmic Spirals 26 Macfarlane's Law 27 Meanness 28 Ninety-Nine Zillion Gazillion 29 Odd One Out 30 One Of Our Vertices Is Missing! 31 One Straight Cut 32 One Thousand Dice 33 One-Hundred-And-Ten Percent 34 Optical Illusions 1 35 Optical Illusions 2 36 Pieces of Chocolate 37 Playing At Transformations 38 Round The Back 39 Shapeshifters 40 Sticky Polygons 41 Striking Angles 42 Switching Switches 43 That Wheeling Feeling 44 The Bear's Ring 45 The Time Is 'Right' 46 Three Squares And A Triangle 47 Timber! 48 Time To Reflect 49 Tricky Triangles 50 Twenty-Four Square Centimetres Bibliography

Reviews

' Good tasks develop a life of their own and shown be readily extendible for learners who need further challenges. The author writes this in his introduction and has produced a set of very good tasks indeed. The tasks take about a side, perhaps two, of A4 to explain and are very easy to understand yet offering a rich task for students to work on...Each task has a summary box explaining the related topics - making it easy to find one for the current topic of study - and the materials needed - essential for preventing disaster as the lesson unfolds...This is a great resource for a department office and for ideas to be shared in advance of the next topic. '--,

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This is an excellent book which no mathematics department should be without. Its 50 self-contained lessons offer amusing, fascinating and mathematically worthwhile tasks which are supported by excellent teacher notes. Most books are not worth recommending but this is different. -- Paul Andrews, Senior Lecturer in Mathematics Education, University of Cambridge This collection is a ""must have"" for every teacher who wants to inspire students to be excited by mathematics, yet not stray too far from core topics. Every lesson contains key insights into mathematics, using ideas, links and contexts which are mysterious, fun, silly, bizarre, practical and historical. -- Anne Watson, Reader in Mathematics Education, University of Oxford ""Good tasks develop a life of their own and shown be readily extendible for learners who need further challenges."" The author writes this in his introduction and has produced a set of very good tasks indeed. The tasks take about a side, perhaps two, of A4 to explain and are very easy to understand yet offering a rich task for students to work on...Each task has a summary box explaining the related topics - making it easy to find one for the current topic of study - and the materials needed - essential for preventing disaster as the lesson unfolds...This is a great resource for a department office and for ideas to be shared in advance of the next topic. -- Peter Hall

Author Information

Colin Foster teaches mathematics at a secondary school in Coventry, UK.

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