Product reviews for Primary Maths

Alisa Lawn, Deputy Head, Lomond Primary School, Helensburgh

This is an energetic read which aims to invigorate the teaching of Maths within a Primary setting. The book mainly contains creative and interesting approaches to introduce new concepts, as well as ideas for games and activities to reinforce prior learning. Much of the book relates to the person'al experience of the author and is full of anecdotes and humour.

This book advocates a fun and active approach to teaching maths and could be an invaluable source of inspiration, particularly for student teachers and those new to the profession. It promotes a particular ideology which challenges the traditional view of how maths could be taught and so is the perfect intro'duction for students who may be unaware of unconventional approaches.

The author emphasises the importance of tailor-making resources to each class and whilst this is good practice, some of the suggestions require significant pre'paration and so, whilst they may be fun and entertaining they are not the most time effective lessons and are therefore unlikely to be used in reality. However, there are also many simple and ingenious ideas included in the book which could be easily incorporated into any classroom.
Although much of the book is enjoy'able to read, it is not a book which is easy to use as a point of reference. The anec'dotes and.quotes are entertaining but the lesson suggestions and explanations are lengthier than necessary which makes retrieving the information for the purpose of actually using it in a lesson rather difficult. For this reason, I would suggest that this book is more useful as a launch'pad for teachers to take a more creative approach to their teaching rather than as a resource to dip in and out of on a reg'ular basis. It should be recommended to both new and experienced teachers.

From: Guest | Date: 21/09/2015 01:00

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