Primary Mathematics Today

The purpose of Primary Mathematics Today, first published in 1970 by Longman, was to give training teachers in Colleges of Education, as well as experienced teachers, an in-depth view of primary mathematics as at the time only a minority of primary teachers had special mathematical training.

The book is not in the first instance a textbook of mathematics for teachers. It is rather a study of primary children learning mathematics. For each stage of development, both general guidance for the teacher and detailed indications of how to approach the appropriate individual topic in the classroom are given. Throughout the book it is assumed that each new mathematical idea must develop in a child's mind through his own activities, handling objects, comparing measurements or shapes, reflecting on the results of his experiments and communicating them to others.

The content, which covers all aspects of mathematical development and mathematical topics many of which extend beyond the needs of the primary curriculum, is presented in five parts, as given below.

Part I First Discoveries
Early experiences, patterns in the mind, beginnings of counting, classification, sets and quantity, foundations of measuring, recording and the structure of number.

Part II Concrete Operations
Four operations of number, natural numbers, movement and vectors, spatial concepts, decimal notation, measuring systems, number systems and calculating machines.

Part III Extending Ideas of Number and Space
Representation of space, operations on fractions and decimals, plane shapes, idea of an angle, 3-D shapes, area, volume, mass and density.

Part IV the collection and treatment of data
Indirect measurement, forces, masses, presenting information, development of graphs, factors, multiples, square and cube numbers, directed numbers, approximation and accuracy.

Part V Development of more abstract ideas
Position, vectors and directed numbers, scale, rate, ratio, triangles, squares and circles, tessellations, rational and irrational numbers, spheres and curves, mathematical structures, sets mappings and groups.

Throughout the chapters, particular themes recur. These themes are:
• Children's early mathematical development
• Children's activities using number
• The development of the number system
• The growth of notation and representation
• Children's ideas of space
• The development of spatial concepts
• Children's experience of quantity and its measurement
• The development of the idea of measurement
• The use of mechanisms
• The unity of mathematical structure

• URL: http://stem.org.uk/rx7c3