Throughout this book, Rozlynn Dance and Tessa Kaplan provide specific strategies that will help you make decisions that benefit all of the learners in your class. You’re about to read a math book that isn’t only about math. It’s really a book about the conditions that maximize learning for any child in any content area.
It’s important that the focus of this book is on math, because so many children (and teachers) lack confidence in math. Students and adults often feel that their disposition toward math is set, thinking that they are either good at math or not good at math. Rozlynn and Tessa show us that isn’t true. They show us strategies teachers can use that will help improve children’s disposition toward math and solving problems (and other content areas as well). And those dispositions are critical. By focusing on dispositions and key principles about learning math, Rozlynn and Tessa provide teachers and students with ideas and skills that will last long beyond the school year.
All children deserve to be in a classroom that nurtures their identities as mathematicians, writers, and readers. To have a positive mathematical identity, all children have to willingly and enthusiastically engage in mathematical thinking each day. Teachers, and the decisions they make, significantly impact children’s disposition and identity whether they realize it or not. This book supports your ability to create classroom communities that nurture all children as thinkers.
— Forward
