Developing Thinking in Geometry
- Sue Johnston-Wilder - The Open University
- John Mason - The Open University
"All readers can use this book to reignite their fascination with mathematics. Fosters not only a curiosity about geometry itself but crucially focuses on how learners can actively engage in thinking about geometry and its central key ideas."
—Sylvia Johnson, Professor, Sheffield Hallam University
"Exudes activity and interactivity. A book for learning geometry, learning to think more deeply about geometry, and also about its teaching and learning."
—David Pimm, Professor, University of Alberta
Developing Thinking in Geometry enables teachers and their support staff to experience and teach geometric thinking. Discussing key teaching principles, the book and its accompanying interactive CD-ROM include many activities encouraging readers to extend their own learning, and teaching practices.
Drawing on innovative approaches for teaching and learning geometry developed by the Open University's Centre for Mathematics Education, this resource is constructed around the following key themes:
- Invariance
- Language and points of view
- Reasoning using invariance
- Visualizing and representing
An excellent book; highlighted some of the key issues with geometrical reasoning.
This text is a recommended read for student teachers, those with an interest in geometry and for the primary mathematics specialist. The book introduces the ‘big ideas’ of geometry to the reader with a varied amount of activities that help build geometrical understanding through reflection and visualisations. The book also contains a CD-ROM with an array of additional material to support geometrical understanding, including interactive activities and audio files.
I would recommend the book for readers who want to develop their knowledge in geometry. This book allows me to explore different ways to solve problem and how to explain it.
I very much liked the structure of the book and the fact that it had many examples and points of reflection. That said I would have liked to see a chapter about 'rich' mathematical geometrical tasks and a chapter where some students' geometrical solutions were shown in detail and aspects of developing students' thinking in geometry discussed in some detail. Overall definitely a recommended text for my students.
