So You Have to Teach Math? Sound Advice for K-6 Teachers
Marilyn Burns and Robyn Silbey
Review by: David Osorio
Catering to teachers at all levels of experience, “So You Have to Teach Math?: Sound Advice for K-6 Teachers” addresses student’s and teacher’s misconceptions about elementary level mathematics. Marilyn Burns, with over 40 years of experience as a mathematics educator and professional development writer, and Robyn Silbey, professional math-coach and leader in professional development workshops for the past 36 years, have collected the most common, yet important questions about mathematics teaching, and offer solutions through theory based strategies and practices. Whether you’re beginning a new year, teaching a new grade, or looking to fine tune your approach, Burns and Silbey’s text is intended to serve as a reference guide for establishing effective mathematics instruction and generating positive student achievement. The valuable advice within this text comes from a wealth of experience in the field of mathematics instruction, thus the activities, strategies and recommendations are tried, tested and true, and have great potential to influence teachers from a wide variety of expertise. This text is not intended to be read from cover-to-cover. Instead, the questions addressed serve to help guide teachers toward more beneficial paths in mathematics education. A complimentary extension to this book would be to have Burns and Silbey explain different ways to connect these real-math practices and strategies to real-world instances, but for now, teachers will just have to look for those answers in the culture of their own classroom.
This book is a valuable resource for educators of primary and junior mathematics and has a pragmatic instructional approach to building confident teachers, and confident students of math.