Are you looking for a fun way to engage students in improving and retaining their mathematical skills? Whether your students need a curricular supplement, a summer review package, or an opportunity to do math at home with parents, humor them with Math with a Laugh.
Math with a Laugh brings together math practice and comedy - some would say for the first time - offering students and teachers funny and functional skills-development experiences. Longtime math teacher Faye Nisonoff Ruopp provides problems carefully crafted to help children strengthen their mathematical thinking. Faye's former student, star comedian Paula Poundstone, sets the problems within funny stories so entertaining to read and solve that students will become immersed in the mathematics.
In You Can't Keep Slope Down eighth and ninth graders encounter age-appropriate problems involving ratios and proportions, simplification of numerical expressions, identification of the meaning of variables and constants, the solving of polynomials and quadratics, the application of the Pythagorean theorem, and the measurement of central tendency in a dataset. Each problem links directly to state and national standards and increases students' capabilities with foundational and computational principles. Math with a Laugh reinforces basic skills and improves retention in class, over the summer, or at home. Ruopp's teaching notes provide answers and help you reinforce the concepts behind the problems, then extend them into other mathematical learning.
Math with a Laugh will enliven any math environment. It's an effective way to help kids build and retain mathematical knowledge and a humorous opportunity to turn rote skill drills into enjoyable learning.
Faye Nisonoff Ruopp currently works as an independent consultant in mathematics professional development in New England and New York City. Previously she taught high school math for twenty-two years, directed several National Science Foundation mathematics professional development projects at Education Development Center, Inc., was a university instructor at Brandeis University, Simmons College, and Worcester State College, served as the principal investigator for Glencoe's Impact Mathematics middle school series, and wrote an online algebraic thinking course for WGBH/The Annenberg Foundation. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with her husband, Charlie; they have one son Marcus.
Paula Poundstone is a single mom with three children. She is a regular panelist on National Public Radio's weekly news quiz show, Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me and tours across the country. Paula has made frequent appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman, Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. She was the first female to win a Cable ACE Award for Best Stand-Up Comedy Special for her HBO special, Cats, Cops, and Stuff. Paula maintains a successful website at www.paulapoundstone.com. She published her first nonmathematical book with Crown in 2006.
