Book Reviews
Book reviews will never be the same! Mti offers a new experience, with exciting hyperlinks, and interviews with the authors. Read on.
Hearing Silence
Margaret Jones reviews ‘Hearing Silence’ by Laurinda Brown and Alf Coles.
This book review links with the article and video in Teacher at Work
This book is about a collaboration between two mathematics teachers. It offers a historical narrative of their joint research into what is involved in becoming a teacher of mathematics. This is a story of change and the process of change. Laurinda Brown and Alf Coles have collaborated for over 10 years, researching strategies for the teaching of mathematics. Their work is valued in both the research and teaching communities. Laurinda Brown teaches at the University of Bristol, Graduate School of Education, having previously been a mathematics teacher and a curriculum developer. Alf Coles teaches at Kingsfield School, South Gloucestershire. He is also doing a part-time PhD at the University of Bristol, taking on the ideas of ‘listening’ that are detailed in the last chapter of this book.
Paperback: 136 pages
Publisher: Black Apollo Press (21 Jul 2008)
Language English
ISBN-10: 1900355590
ISBN-13: 978-1900355599
There is a chance to see one of the co-authors of this book – Alf Coles working with a group of year 7s as they attempt to solve Pick’s Theorem. Being a fly on the wall inside the mathematics class provides a rich opportunity to see ourselves - as students and pupils perhaps see us.
Go to the article and video here...
A Mathematician’s Apology
Dennis Pinshon reflects on ‘A Mathematician’s Apology’ by Hardy after finding it when clearing out his classroom on retirement.
G H Hardy was one of this century’s finest mathematical thinkers, renowned among his contemporaries as a ‘real mathematician … the purest of the pure’. He was also, as C. P. Snow recounts in his Foreword, ‘unorthodox, eccentric, radical, ready to talk about anything’. This ‘apology’, written in 1940 as his mathematical powers were declining, offers a brilliant and engaging account of mathematics as very much more than a science; when it was first published, Graham Greene hailed it alongside Henry James’s notebooks as ‘the best account of what it was like to be a creative artist’. C. P. Snow’s Foreword gives sympathetic and witty insights into Hardy’s life, with its rich store of anecdotes concerning his collaboration with the brilliant Indian mathematician Ramanujan, his aphorisms and idiosyncrasies, and his passion for cricket. This is a unique account of the fascination of mathematics and of one of its most compelling exponents in modern times.
Paperback: 153 pages
Publisher: Cambridge University Press; New edition (31 Jan 1992)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0521427061
ISBN-13: 978-0521427067
A Mathematician’s Apology at Amazon
Autograph Activities
Autograph Activities: Teachers’ Book (2009)and Students’ Book (2009)
Craig Barton, the author, talks about the creation of these books, and watch him put it to work with his Y12 class and in the computer lab. In two parts.
Autograph Activities: Teacher Demonstrations for 16-19 The fifteen teacher demonstrations will allow you dynamically to introduce, review, extend or illustrate important topics or concepts in ways not previously possible. They are intended for use on an interactive whiteboard or by means of a digital projector. The demonstrations are presented in an easy to follow, step-by-step manner, complete with full colour screenshots, suggested questions and prompts, thus allowing even a first time user to feel confident enough to deliver them.
Autograph Activities: Students Investigations for 16-19 Autograph is an excellent tool for investigation, and mathematics is at its strongest and most appealing when students can embark upon such journeys of self-discovery. The ten activities are designed to allow students to fully utilise Autograph’s power to explore, investigate and ultimately understand concepts at a depth which the normal classroom setting would not allow.
