Creative Activities in Mathematics - Book 1: Problem-Based Maths Investigations for Lower and Middle Primary

Problem-based learning is a powerful alternative to drill-and practice or skills-based learning, especially within maths, but it can be difficult to source rich materials that engage an entire class.

The Creative Activities in Mathematics series provides a wealth of investigations and open-ended active learning activities, designed to engage students with mathematics and develop their problem solving, collaboration and mathematical skills.

Book One provides 12 different class activities suitable for students in lower and middle primary school (Foundation to Year 4), along with teaching notes and staged lesson plans. Each activity is a whole-class investigation with open-ended answers that takes a particular scenario and develops it over three levels. This enables it to be used both at different year levels and with students of differing ability in the same class. All activities are firmly rooted in the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics and linked to the content descriptors of the Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry, and Statistics and Probability strands.

Derek Holton trained as a secondary teacher but has spent most of his life as an academic, doing research in combinatorics and various aspects of mathematics education, including problem solving. However, he has never lost his interest in trying to show students what he enjoys about mathematics. For almost 25 years he worked in New Zealand, where he was part of the group that prepared students to take part in the International Mathematical Olympiad. An Honorary Professor at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, Derek is now retired but still works with students and teachers at every opportunity.

Cath Pearn is a Senior Research Fellow in the ACER Institute. In this role she has written, delivered and reviewed programs for Australian primary and secondary classroom teachers. As a lecturer in Mathematics Education at the University of Melbourne, Cath teaches early childhood, primary, secondary and special education students at postgraduate level. She has had extensive teaching experience in primary schools and tutored secondary students across a range of mathematics subjects. Cath has been involved in research projects investigating how students learn mathematics at the early childhood, primary, secondary and tertiary levels, particularly students mathematically 'at risk'.