Geometric Structures: An Inquiry-Based Approach for Prospective Elementary and Middle School Teachers

For prospective elementary and middle school teachers. This text provides a creative, inquiry-based experience with geometry that is appropriate for prospective elementary and middle school teachers. The coherent series of text activities supports each student’s growth toward being a confident, independent learner empowered with the help of peers to make sense of the geometric world. This curriculum is explicitly developed to provide future elementary and middle school teachers with experience recalling and appropriately using standard geometry ideas, experience learning and making sense of new geometry, experience discussing geometry with peers, experience asking questions about geometry, experience listening and understanding as others talk about geometry, experience gaining meaning from reading geometry, experience expressing geometry ideas through writing, experience thinking about geometry, and experience doing geometry. These activities constitute an “inquiry based” curriculum. In this style of learning and teaching, whole class discussions and group work replace listening to lectures as the dominant class activity.