Teaching Number: Advancing Children′s Skills and Strategies - Tapa dura

`I have tried many of the suggestions and teaching procedures and seen short and long-term success, both with individuals and groups. It will be a valuable resource for the primary-school teacher, especially with older children who need accurate and specialised development. A sound approach to mathematics teaching could be developed from conscientious use of this resource' - Matthew Alcock, Primary Practice

`This is a highly detailed and well-structured text to support the teaching of number skills at the primary phase with particular emphasis given to the 4-8 years age range. From the outset, the authors take great care to set out their credentials and the scope of their writing. It is clear that the guidance, teaching approach and activities offered in the book have been thoroughly tried and tested throughout the 1990s during research and development work with teachers in Australia, England and the USA in the Mathematics Recovery (MR) and Count Me In Too (CMIT) projects' - Mathematics in Schools

This book provides a structured approach to the teaching of early numeracy, which has been extensively developed through the Mathematics Recovery and Count Me In Too Projects in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The book lets teachers identify where their students are in terms of number skills, and sets out a strategy for developing their knowledge. The authors show how to advance children's learning across five stages - emergent, perceptual, figurative, initial number, and facile number. This provides for increasingly sophisticated number strategies. Teaching procedures are organised into key teaching topics, and each includes:

- a clearly defined purpose

- detailed teaching procedures and learning tasks

- application in whole class, small group and individualised settings

- a link to the Learning Framework in Number.

The activities have been tested by practitioners in Australia, the United States and the United States and can be used within each country's numeracy strategy.

This book will be useful to primary teachers, especially in the early years, mathematics co-ordinators, heads of school, mathematics advisers, learning support personnel, lecturers and educational psychologists.

This book builds on the assessment of children's strategies set out in the authors' Early Numeracy (Paul Chapman Publishing 2000)

Dr Robert J. (Bob) Wright holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in mathematics from the University of Queensland (Australia) and a doctoral degree in mathematics education from the University of Georgia. He is an adjunct professor in mathematics education at Southern Cross University in New South Wales. Bob is an internationally recognized leader in assessment and instruction relating to children’s early arithmetical knowledge and strategies, publishing four books, and many articles and papers in this field. His work over the last 20 years has included the development of the Mathematics Recovery Program which focuses on providing specialist training for teachers to advance the numeracy levels of young children assessed as low-attainers. In Australia and New Zealand, Ireland, the UK, the USA, Canada, Mexico and elsewhere, this program has been implemented widely and applied extensively to classroom teaching and to average and able learners as well as low-attainers. He has conducted several research projects funded by the Australian Research Council including the most recent project focusing on assessment and intervention in the early arithmetical learning of low-attaining 8–10-year-olds.