Nearly there...

Jings but this has taken a while... sorry and all that. Spot the teacher who is now back at work!

So, number four... and time to pluck yet another oldish textbook from the realms of obscurity and hold it up as a shining example of what a good, solid textbook should be. No piccies, I'm afraid, as it's been a long time since I set eyes on a copy.

A long time ago when Standard Grade was in its infancy, a teacher called Isobel Vass wrote a series of three textbooks called "Foundations in Maths", designed for use with Foundation Level pupils. Isobel went on to become a Maths Adviser - this was back in the days when these essential (dammit!) posts still existed - and from there on to even greater heights, so she may well be surprised to find these books hailed as one of her crowining achievements, but there you go.

What was so good about them? Well, they were well written with a lot of real-life examples, and were a step above your "hundred questions all the same" stuff, in that they managed to contain challenging questions which were nevertheless achievable by kids with pretty low abilities on math. Nice one, Isobel!

Sadly the books were never very popular - I guess most preferred just to keep the Foundation kids happy with the mathematical equivalent of colouring in - but hey, since when did the popularity of a book mean it was any good?

Three more to go... over by the weekend, I promise. And if anyone out there has suggestions or comments, please do lob them in. You don't need a blogger account, as you can comment anonymously. Go on, you know you want to...