This exciting text for the pre-service elementary teacher provides hands on mathematics lessons they can use to introduce mathematical concepts and skills that students find particularly challenging. Each chapter is divided into four sections:

• The Activity employs an engaging thought experiment to help the reader "visit a classroom" to understand how the lesson used to introduce the concept or skill would materialize in the class.
• The Mathematics provides the necessary mathematical background used in the lesson to make the actual teaching/learning situation comfortable for both the teachers and the learner.
• The Plan provides the reader with an actual lesson plan to engage the Activity in the classroom setting.
• Putting It All Together pulls the previous sections together with a summary of the chapter as well as further information for making the lesson successful.

By providing models of what excellent lessons on a given topic look like, knowledge of the mathematics involved, and a concrete lesson plan structure this much-needed resource is the definitive mathematics planning vehicle that every teacher will want before they set foot in their own elementary classroom.

@contents:Introduction

1. How Children Learn Mathematics (and Why it Doesn't Happen!)

2. Median: Finding What's in the Middle

3. Rounding: The Mystery of 'Rounding up for 5'

4. Skipping Multiplication (or at Least Through it.)

5. Learning to Use Division

6. Fractions: What's it all About?

7. Fractions: Adding Unlike Things? Impossible!

8. Fractions: Dividing into Small Pieces

9. Decimals: Operations Before Rules

10. Measurement: Make your Own Ruler

11. Area: Skipping Through the Rows

12. Volume: It's Like Look at an Apartment House …..

13. Mean: How Much Does Each Get?

14. Percent: Leveling the Field of Comparison

15. Order of Operations: An Agreement? Did You Get the Memo?