Making Math Connections

This book is aimed at students in years 6 to 9 and is dedicated to teachers who ‘continue to strive to make mathematics an exciting, challenging and sense-making experience for their students.’ After the author met some seventh-grade (year 8) students who said ‘Math hasn’t made sense since fifth grade! We just memorise how to get the answer and you know, the way to get the right answer doesn’t always make sense!’ she felt inspired to find ways to get her lessons to make sense – and here is the benefit of her experience. Lesson ideas are grouped by real-world topic rather than mathematics topic.

Subjects covered by the book are:

• Our Earth, Natural Disasters
• Earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes and tornadoes
• Physics, Formulas and Maths
• Sports Balls, Density, Pendulum Swings and Roller Coasters
• Our Body Systems
• Our remarkable heart, how long is your digestive system (etc)
• Quilts, Tessellations and 3D geometry
• The Stock Market Project
• Math and Literature

Looking for math in poetry, traveling to Lilliput, how big is a million?

Each chapter has background material for the teacher, a photocopiable worksheet, answers, additional reading and suggested websites. The worksheets are clear and would be easy for students to complete with minimal help. The topics are really interesting and students would experience a wide range of interesting applications of mathematics.

As our curriculum is being questioned this book may become useful to more and more people. This book presents a convincing case for starting our lessons in the real-world rather than viewing the real-world as appropriate for challenging extension questions.

These ideas would help students produce project work – and may be useful for post-SAT times or just for finding a different way to introduce topics. The website resources alone would make this book worth the effort.

I’m looking forward to finding ways of using these resources in my lessons and can only recommend you read it too.

Peter Hall • Imberhorne School, East Grinstead

Making Math Connections
Using Real-World Applications with Middle-School Students
Hope Martin
Corwin Press (£27 Paperback, £58 Clothback)
September 2006
ISBN 1-4129-3765-5 (Clothback) 1-4129-3766-3 (Paperback)

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