Putting Essential Understanding of Ratios and Proportions into Practice in Grades 6–8

by Travis A. Olson

Do your students think they can model ratios with sets of discrete objects and combine them to show the addition of ratios? Do they believe that equivalent ratios are based on additive relationships rather than multiplicative ones? What tasks can you offer what questions can you ask to determine what your students know or don't know and move them forward in their thinking? This book focuses on the specialized pedagogical content knowledge that you need to teach ratios and proportions effectively in grades 6-8. The authors demonstrate how to use this multifaceted knowledge to address the big ideas and essential understandings that students must develop for success with ratios and proportions--not only in their current work, but also in higher-level mathematics and a myriad of real-world contexts. Explore rich, research-based strategies and tasks that show how students are reasoning about and making sense of ratios and proportions. Use the opportunities that these and similar tasks provide to build on their understanding while identifying and correcting misunderstandings that may be keeping them from taking the next steps in learning.

142 pages, Paperback

Published March 15, 2015

Reviews

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only interesting if you are REALLY interested in getting to know ratios and proportions down to their bones. I read it as a curriculum resource for the unit we're teaching (and because I have a professional goal of reading a teacher book a month) but it definitely had to be read in short chunks :P Examples of students' work and thinking, which are always interesting, but - like most teaching philosophy books - not always totally grounded in the actual real-world context of daily life in a classroom environment.