Out of print

Math Lit

Kathleen Almy, Rock Valley College

Heather Foes, Rock Valley College

MyLab

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Overview

Description

This package consists of the textbook plus an access kit for MyMathLab/MyStatLab.

Math Lit, by Kathleen Almy and Heather Foes, provides a one-semester alternative to the traditional two-semester developmental algebra sequence for non-STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) students. This new approach offers an accelerated pathway to college readiness through developmental math, allowing non-STEM students to move directly into liberal arts math or introductory statistics, while also preparing STEM students for intermediate algebra. Through its emphasis on contextual problem-solving, the Almy/Foes worktext and its accompanying MyMathLab^® course help students understand and practice the major themes of numeracy, proportional reasoning, algebraic reasoning, and functions.

MyMathLab provides a wide range of homework, tutorial, and assessment tools that make it easy to manage your course online.

Features

The textbook content is organized into cycles (rather than linear chapters) that take a spiral approach to covering topics that relate to four thematic strands—numeracy, proportional reasoning, algebraic reasoning, and functions. Once introduced, these thematic topics are revisited several times as appropriate, going into a little more detail each time.

Each cycle is divided into three parts:

Gear Up – introduces key ideas for the cycle.
Shift Gears—contains the bulk of the content and skills for the cycle.
Wind Down—connects the main ideas and wraps things up.

Cycles are composed of activity-based lessons that include carefully designed tasks, explorations, and instruction—all paced for the developmental learner. Most lessons are divided into 4 segments:

Explore—offers an interesting problem or group activity to open the lesson and set the stage for the new material
Discover—presents a new theory with examples and practice problems.
Connect—connects content to past or future lessons through a group or class problem.
Reflect—provides an opportunity to look back at what has been learned.

End-of-lesson homework begins with skills-based assignments in MyMathLab^® and the worktext. Students are also asked to complete conceptual and application-based problems in the text to expand their understanding beyond a procedural level.
End-of-Cycle Wrap-Ups provide a five-step action plan to help students study and prepare for the Cycle test. A Cycle Profile gives a brief overview of important topics, and a Self Assessment asks students to indicate their level of expertise with each topic.

The Math Lit approach encourages contextual learning, helping students see the relevance of math and cultivate conceptual thinking. Topics are put into real-world context and explored before the procedures and details are explained.

Rather than a focus on skills-based algebra, Math Lit focuses solving realistic problems, teaching number sense, and building mathematical literacy.
An open-ended Focus Problem introduces each cycle and is revisited regularly until it is solved at the conclusion of the cycle. Lessons that contain math concepts directly relating to solving the cycle’s focus problem are indicated with an “FP.”

Math Lit’s emphasis on study skills provides students with a solid foundation for college readiness. Much of Cycle 1 is devoted to study skills to help prepare students for subsequent cycles and future courses.

Several student-friendly features help support good study habits:

Cycle 1 covers topics such as understanding the syllabus, working in groups, and thinking about the difference between attitude and ability in math.
How It Works boxes summarize important procedures and skills and provide a quick reference to help with the homework.
Look It Up boxes present short definitions of key terms, along with an example.
Remember? blurbs remind students of skills that have been presented previously but might need to be reviewed.
A Closer Look boxes further develop and explain content before resuming the context of the lesson.
Sticky Notes briefly provide students with pointers and study tips.

Math Lit’s loose-leaf, 3-hole-punched format encourages students to write and keep their work and use the worktext as the start of a class notebook.

MyMathLab delivers proven results in helping students succeed and provides engaging experiences that personalize learning. The Almy/Foes course includes all of MyMathLab’s robust features, plus these additional highlights:

A Guided Learning Path—students are asked to Prepare, Participate, or Practice throughout the Almy/Foes lessons, as appropriate.

Prepare and Participate direct students to eText content that they should read on their own, and/or activities they should work on in small groups or with the entire class.
Practice prompts students to work through problems in MyMathLab or in their worktexts.

A new Media Update, released in Summer 2014, will include videos for students, giving them even more resources for outside the classroom, and giving instructors added flexibility in class format. These videos can be used to supplement learning as students practice or can be assigned to prepare students for their classroom activity.

Videos walk students through examples, giving them an extra opportunity to reinforce and practice skills and concepts.
Videos cover many “A Closer Look” features in the text, allowing students to follow along with the content from the text.

A Factoring Appendix has also been added in MyMathLab to supplement courses that will require coverage of factoring.
Pre-made, Ready to Go Assignments—the authors have created Skills assignments for nearly all lessons in the worktext. Instructors can edit these assignments as they wish. Additional conceptual exercises are also available for instructors to include as needed.
Instructor Teaching Tip Videos--These new videos, produced by the authors, present helpful suggestions based on their own experiences teaching courses in Math Literacy for College Students. Including topics such as a typical day, focus problems, and group work, these videos provide the guidance an instructor might find useful in teaching this course, or with this text, for the first time.
Accessibility Enhancements—Pearson is committed to making our products accessible to as many students as possible. This latest course release is compatible with the JAWS screen reader, enabling print-disabled students to access and interact with numerous problems as noted by an icon within the assignment manager. The course also works with the ZoomText enlarger, and includes an HTML eBook that is compatible with JAWS and other Windows screen readers, allowing all students to access the same text, at the same place, and at the same price. Additionally all videos include closed captioning.

Resources

Websites and online courses

Other Student Resources

Discipline Resources

Format	Study Card
ISBN-13:	9780321394767
Suggested retail price	$6.65
Availability	Available

Discovering Algebra: Examples with Keystrokes on the TI-83/TI-82 and TI-85/TI-86, A Laboratory Approach
Pirich & Bigliani
©1997 | 208 pp

Format	Paper
ISBN-13:	9780136492030
Suggested retail price	$73.32
Availability	Available

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About the Author(s)

Kathleen Almy has been a professor of mathematics at Rock Valley College for over 10 years and has taught high school and college level math for 15 years. She has a bachelor's degree in mathematics education from Southern Illinois University and master's degree in pure mathematics from Northern Illinois University. Her passion is improving developmental math for all students including the development of courses and content that is appropriate, relevant, and meaningful. As her department's developmental math coordinator, she organized and led a successful comprehensive redesign of the program over the past 5 years. As a result of giving talks about the redesign, she has been consulting with colleges throughout Illinois and across the country to improve their developmental math programs. Since 2009, she has been a member of AMATYC's Quantway project which is affiliated with the Carnegie Foundation. She was AMATYC’s Developmental Math Committee chair and serves on several state committees on developmental education.

Heather Foes is currently a professor of Mathematics at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Illinois and has also taught at Illinois State University, Northern Illinois University and the University of Illinois. Heather has a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and mathematics and a master’s degree in mathematics from Illinois State University. She has written solution manuals and other supplemental materials over the last ten years, as well as algorithmic questions for test-generator software and conceptual questions for MyStatLab for Pearson.

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