In providing a continued focus on tasks and activities that help to illustrate key ideas embedded in the new Australian Curriculum, this issue will focus on Number in the Number and Algebra strand. In this article Derek Hurrell provides a few tried and proven activities to develop place value understanding. These activities are provided for…

This article introduces a trigonometric field (TF) that extends the field of real numbers by adding two new elements: sin and cos--satisfying an axiom sin[superscript 2] + cos[superscript 2] = 1. It is shown that by assigning meaningful names to particular elements of the field, all known trigonometric identities may be introduced and proved. Two…

This article reports on work undertaken by schools as part of Qualifications and Curriculum Authority's (QCA's) "Engaging mathematics for all learners" project. The goal was to use in the classroom, materials and approaches from a Royal Institution (Ri) Year 10 master-class, "Number Sense", which was inspired by examples from…

The topics discussed are, "Helping Students Understand the Distributive Property,""Converting from Base 10: Nonintegral Bases?,""Rapid Mental Squaring of Mixed Numbers," and "Some Nonstandard Binary Operations and their Properties." (JT)

Born in 1707, Leonhard Euler was the son of a Protestant minister from the vicinity of Basel, Switzerland. With the aim of pursuing a career in theology, Euler entered the University of Basel at the age of thirteen, where he was tutored in mathematics by Johann Bernoulli (of the famous Bernoulli family of mathematicians). He developed an interest…

The material in this booklet is designed for non-professional mathematicians who have an interest in the theory of numbers. The author presents some elementary results of number theory without involving detailed proofs. Much of the material has direct application for secondary school mathematics teachers. A brief account of the nature of number…

The author observes that checking the closure property is redundant for most number systems and therefore hard for students to understand. He defines several systems which are not closed, develops two concepts related to closure, and provides many related examples. (SD)

This guide contains an outline of topics to be included in individual subject areas in secondary school mathematics and some specific suggestions for teaching them. Areas covered include--(1) fundamentals of mathematics included in seventh and eighth grades and general mathematics in the high school, (2) algebra concepts for courses one and two,…

The primary aim of this guide is to aid teachers in planning and preparing a senior high school mathematics course for students preparing for college work. It is divided into separate one-semester courses of seven chapters each. The first-semester course consists of a traditional approach to the introduction of trigonometry and trigonometric…

This teacher-prepared Learning Activity Package (LAP) for individualized instruction in topics in pre-algebra covers the natural numbers, whole numbers, and integers. The unit contains a rationale for the material, a list of behavioral objectives, a list of resources including texts (with reading assignments and problem sets specified) and tape…

A set of ten teacher-prepared Learning Activity Packages (LAPs) for individualized instruction in topics in pre-algebra, the units cover the decimal numeration system; number theory; fractions and decimals; ratio, proportion, and percent; sets; properties of operations; rational numbers; real numbers; open expressions; and open rational…