These materials consist of a 524-page professional developers' binder accompanied by a 162-page mathematics handbook and a videotape. The large binder provides a collection of elementary mathematics professional development session outlines, aspects of which are illustrated by videotape excerpts, and the mathematics handbook provides background information about the mathematical content addressed in the binder.

In addition, a staff developement guide is also available and specific to the Everyday Mathematics instructional program and the Investigations in Number, Data and Space program.

Although it is not explicitly stated, the inferred purpose of these materials is to provide a guide for elementary professional developers, coaches, and teacher-leaders with materials and focused session outlines for implementing mathematics professional development experiences for elementary teachers. These experiences appear to be intended to teach mathematical concepts to adults as well as to help them analyze children's thinking as children learn and demonstrate skills and concepts.

Bridges to Classroom Mathematics first provides a large binder of outlines for elementary mathematics professional development sessions. Although an index of the mathematical topics of the outlines is provided, no introduction or preface is included; the material is much more of a resource binder than a formal text. The materials also include a mathematics handbook and a videotape. The mathematics handbook provides a selection of readings, organized according to mathematical strands, that provide teachers with background information, additional explanations, and examples with regard to the mathematical topics. The videotape provides clips from elementary classrooms using reform-based curricula that highlight children's mathematical thinking in relation to a variety of topics such as number patterns, odd and even numbers, subtraction strategies, data collection, and three-dimensional geometry. The binder's session outlines make reference to readings from the mathematics handbook and to clips from the videotape when they are appropriate for the content of a given professional development experience. All of these materials are focused not on a particular curriculum or activities for students, but rather on engaging teachers in examining mathematical content, their own understanding of that content, and children's thinking and learning about that content.

The Bridges materials provide easy-to-follow outlines for professional developers or teacher-leaders planning mathematics professional development sessions for elementary teachers. In this regard, they are in a form that is very accessible and user-friendly, although the binder itself is a bit unwieldy given its bulk and size. What is particularly helpful in the session outlines are the focus questions that are provided for facilitators or leaders to use when implementing a session; including this structure emphasizes the importance of reflection questions and focus or guiding questions when engaging teachers in meaningful professional development. Also, each session includes the masters needed for all handouts and overhead transparencies that are referred to in the session, putting all necessary materials at the hands of the user.

The depth of mathematical content that is addressed in the mathematics handbook moves beyond elementary school topics to provide teachers with a deeper understanding of the mathematical content they are teaching. It presents this information primarily in the form of two to three page papers that focus on a particular topic or aspect of a mathematical strand. This format allows the user to read those pieces that are relevant to the topic being addressed in a particular professional development session. At times, a session outline in the professional developers' binder will recommend that a facilitator read a particular piece of the handbook prior to implementing a session in order to have significant background knowledge about the mathematics; at other times, pieces of the handbook are recommended to be provided for session participants to provide them with further content knowledge reading. The papers in this handbook present the mathematical content using accurate knowledge and with mathematical examples; at times, the papers also make reference to how a given mathematical topic may be approached by children in the classroom.

These materials could readily be used by a professional developer, teacher-leader, or mathematics coach as a resource when planning either a single mathematics professional development session for a group of elementary teachers or, ideally, a series of sessions, allowing them to examine a strand of mathematics over time and thereby deepen their own mathematical content knowledge and understanding of how children develop these mathematical ideas. It could be that a facilitator selects a particularly powerful session or series of sessions from the binder and shares those sessions as they are written with a group of teachers. Or, a facilitator could assess the needs, interests, and mathematical issues of a group of teachers, select the session or sessions that would best address those issues, and adapt the outlines and suggestions from the materials in order to best meet the particular needs, interests, and prior experiences of the group. Bridges sessions could be particularly powerful when they include teachers from across a range of grade levels. The mathematical content may target a particular segment of that grade range, but the exchange of ideas could facilitate understanding of how these ideas grow across the grades.

One reviewer noted that, frequently, the activities implemented in a given Bridges session are not those that the teachers will bring back to the classroom to implement with children, for they are intended to stimulate the mathematical thinking of the adult learner. For some, this may differ significantly from the model of professional development with which they are familiar, so it may be helpful for the facilitator to make this explicit to the group. Also, these materials are still in draft form; consequently, there are minor editing concerns and the need for a more easily manageable format.