Education

Elementary School Mathematics for Parent and Teachers

A two-volume book for grownups about children’s mathematics. I wrote it motivated from my experience in running a professional development program for elementary school teachers (see below). Its goal is to introduce parents and teachers to the foundations and the principles of the mathematics learned in elementary school. The book’s main focus is content knowledge, but it contains in addition many reflections on pedagogical matters.

The first volume (published in October 2015) focuses roughly on material covered in Grades K-3: natural numbers, the decimal system, the four operations of arithmetics, addition and subtraction of multi-digit numbers, the foundations of geometry and the measurement of length, angle and area. The second volume (published in early 2017) covers the rest of the elementary school curriculum: multi-digit multiplication and division, prime and decomposable numbers, fractions, and operations with fractions.

Elementary School Teachers Development Program

Between 2008 and 2017, a very unique project has been carried out within the hospices of the Hebrew University Institute of Mathematics. Together with a group of graduate students, I ran an in-service development program for elementary school teachers. This project was in cooperation with the Israeli Ministry of Education.

The main goal of this development program was to consolidate teachers' knowledge both in the subject matter, as in its pedagogy. In particular, it aimed to endear mathematics on teachers by exposing them to passionate mathematicians.

The program focused among other things on:

The arithmetic operations: their interpretations and properties.
The development of standard and non-standard strategies for problem-solving.
Students' misconception and ways to rectify them.
Applications of mathematics in daily life.
Geometry, measurements, transformations and spatial sense.

In addition, this development program served as a platform for peer discussion about issues and difficulties encountered in the field. Teachers were constantly invited to present difficulties, misconceptions, and interesting events encountered in class. The group discussions helped analyzing those situations and offer possible remedies.

The success of this program was due above all to the group of vigorous and highly motivated graduate students who showed great talent, and spent time and effort in improving math education in our society. In chronological order: Alon Pinto, Moria Sigron, Menny Aka, Noa Nitzan, Noa Eidelstein, Ron Rosenthal, Ori Parzanchevski, Chaim Even Zohar, Amitai Zernik, Doron Puder, Ayala Byron, Denise Haddad, Intisar Natsheh, Liana Jaber, Shir Peled, Ariel Goldstein, Yannai Gonczarowski, Shani Regev, Or Landsberg, Shlomi Hod, Ori Rosenstein, Roy Schwartz, Eran Assaf, Lior Yanovski and Avigail Schleifer.

Special thanks to Jason Cooper, whose doctoral dissertation “Mathematicians and Primary School Teachers Learning From Each Other” analyses this program. Many thanks also to Abraham Arcavi for his guidance, and to Dan Feldman for allocating funds.

Matific

In 2012, I co-founded Matific (together with Shimon Schocken, Shmulik London, Guy Vardi and Leon Kamenev). Matific is learning platform offering a suite of educational games for children in Grades K to 6. Matific comprises many hundreds of games, each offering a progression of hands-on activities that address one or more mathematical concepts, skill or insight. It is multi-lingual (over 50 languages), runs on all platforms and it is adapted to school curricula of over 50 countries. Matific has a school product and a home products called Matific Galaxy.