[A] great resource for teachers of accelerated middle school students. . . Because of the adaptability of the problems, this book would be useful for a variety of grade levels, from fifth through eighth. It contains a treasure trove of rich tasks to engage top students.

Explorations are deep, rich, and open-ended. They are excellent DOK (Depth Of Knowledge) 3 experiences. The focus is conceptual understanding and discovery, not rules and rote practice. Students—and teachers—are encouraged to be prepared for what will be a productive struggle . . . I am learning to enjoy the “productive struggle” that comes when students work on real, conceptual understanding of topics in math. Advanced Common Core Math Explorations: Ratios, Proportions, & Similarity, Grades 5–8 provides such problems and gives teachers the support they need in using the problems in their classrooms.

The book provides step-by-step teacher guidance on how to support students for the deepest understanding. Each of the ten chapters is an exploration of a real-world problem that is subdivided into three stages with multiple problems per stage. Students will tackle real world problems, such as determining the size of bicycle gears, estimating the height of a transmission tower, and calculating distances among planets. The book comes with detailed teacher goals, recommendations on how to present the explorations, question prompts to guide students without telling them what to do, and multiple detailed approaches for each problem so students can improve their flexible problem-solving skills.

Full review available at Mindprint Learning