Discovering Mathematical Thought: Growing the Math Side of the Brain

Most math instruction comes to students in pre-packaged lessons, where the learning outcomes are often stated to students in advance, and the instruction is staged to align with some distant test question. In that scenario there’s little for the student to discover but a barrage of math facts presented with repetitive problem sets. It’s an unnatural process that tends to starve the brain, leading to a kind of hollow instruction. Discovering Mathematical Thought: Growing the Math Side of the Brain is an activities-based approach to training the mind to observe fundamental mathematical concepts. Math reasoning is then encouraged by extending those concepts to a variety of problem situations. Recommended for students grades 4-8.