Engage students in mathematics using growth mindset techniquesThe most challenging parts of teaching mathematics are engaging students and helping them understand the connections between mathematics concepts. In this volume, you'll find a collection of low floor, high ceiling tasks that will help you do just that, by looking at the big ideas at the eighth-grade level through visualization, play, and investigation.During their work with tens of thousands of teachers, authors Jo Boaler, Jen Munson, and Cathy Williams heard the same message--that they want to incorporate more brain science into their math instruction, but they need guidance in the techniques that work best to get across the concepts they needed to teach. So the authors designed Mindset Mathematics around the principle of active student engagement, with tasks that reflect the latest brain science on learning. Open, creative, and visual math tasks have been shown to improve student test scores, and more importantly change their relationship with mathematics and start believing in their own potential. The tasks in Mindset Mathematics reflect the lessons from brain science that:* There is no such thing as a math person - anyone can learn mathematics to high levels.* Mistakes, struggle and challenge are the most important times for brain growth.* Speed is unimportant in mathematics.* Mathematics is a visual and beautiful subject, and our brains want to think visually about mathematics.With engaging questions, open-ended tasks, and four-color visuals that will help kids get excited about mathematics, Mindset Mathematics is organized around nine big ideas which emphasize the connections within the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and can be used with any current curriculum.

Introduction 1Low-Floor, High-Ceiling Tasks 2Youcubed Summer Camp 3Memorization versus Conceptual Engagement 4Mathematical Thinking, Reasoning, and Convincing 5Big Ideas 9Structure of the Book 9Note on Materials 17Manipulatives and Materials Used in This Book 18Activities for Building Norms 21Encouraging Good Group Work 21Paper Folding: Learning to Reason, Convince, and Be a Skeptic 22Big Idea 1: Moving Shapes 27Visualize: What Does It Mean to Be the Same? 29Play: Pixel Puzzles 35Investigate: Slide It, Flip It, Turn It 45Big Idea 2: Zooming In and Out 53Visualize: What is Similarity? 55Play: Find the Fakes 60Investigate: Growing on a Grid 65Big Idea 3: Analyzing Proportional Relationships 71Visualize: Dropping the Altitude 73Play: Seeing Triangles under the Line 79Investigate: Stairway to Eleven 85Big Idea 4: Comparing Patterns of Growth 91Visualize: Squared Squares 93Play: Skip-Counting Arrays 100Investigate: Stacking Pennies 107Big Idea 5: The Ins and Outs of Functions 117Visualize: Growing Functions 120Play: Getting Warmer! 134Investigate: The Functions of Near Squares 140Big Idea 6: Finding Patterns in the Clouds 149Visualize: What's Going On in This Graph? 151Play: What's the Story Here? 158Investigate: Creating Data Visualizations 166Big Idea 7: Completing the Real Number System 177Visualize: Square Sides 179Play: Between 4 × 4 and 5 × 5 187Investigate: The Hypotenuse Hypothesis 193Big Idea 8: Discovering Pythagoras 201Visualize: Unpacking Pythagoras 204Play: Pythagorean Triples 209Investigate: Approximating Square Roots 214Big Idea 9: Exploring the Geometry of Ice Cream 221Visualize: Building Intuition about Volume 223Play: Comparing Cylinders 227Investigate: Scooping Up Volume 233Appendix 239Centimeter Grid Paper 240Grid Paper 241Isometric Dot Paper 242Dot Paper 243About the Authors 245Acknowledgments 247Index 249