1-6

MathABC.com is a promising website that is still being developed, but has potential even now. Here, you will find practice problems for various topics the developer believes to be grade appropriate. You will not find bells and whistles, but you and your students will find that they can modify the degree of difficulty for each topic. This is noted by the number of stars each link has beside it. Zero stars means that it should already be mastered, while five stars equates to a more difficult problem. While differentiating the content to your students, this may come in handy.

1-6

StudyJams has over 200 resources from Scholastic for free! The quality is nothing short of amazing. If you like to use Brain Pop as an introduction, you’ll love this.

When you enter the site, you can click on “See All Topics”. Basically, all topics are covered in our curriculum, so everything fits very well. Once you select a topic, you will see all the subtopics listed below. Most have “Step by Step” and “Test Yourself”. You will also see key vocabulary needed to understand the topic.

The “Step by Step” resource is an animated video with excellent graphics. The most powerful aspect is that they relate the topic to a real world example. The video is interactive, so you could have students come up to the SMART board to get involved, or have them use these with a set of laptops.

Finally, when you look at a video, there is a section called “Watch Out!” which highlights trouble areas. If you want to hear a song for divisibility rules that’s included in one of the many resources, go here and click on the “Sing Karaoke”. Check it out!

7-12

OK secondary teachers… Here’s a keeper! You are always looking for great application of mathematical concepts. This site has about 238 activities already designed (that also include PSSA standards if you select PA from the list). Each of the 98 lessons describes exactly what to do with the students. They give resources, vocabulary, and the motivation for students to learn the material.

TEACHEngineering was initiated by the merging of K-12 engineering curricula created by four universities, the collection continues to grow and evolve over time with new additions from other universities, and input from teachers who use the curricula in their classrooms. When you visit, you will see each is categorized by the “course” such as: Algebra, Geometry, Probability, etc.

K-8

I4c is a free web portal designed to assist anyone who wants to find high-quality, free Internet resources to use in classroom instruction, developing project ideas, reinforcing specific subject matter areas both in the class and at home and even for online technology tutorials.

Here, you will find links by grade level for skill building as well as assessment. Once there, you will see each grade listed to the left. Simply select the one you want, and pick mathematics. A nice feature is that they regularly test for broken links so that you don’t get the “site not found” error message.

6-12

Mike DeGraba is the Math Dude in these fast–paced programs aimed at helping students with Algebra I as they are also being taught in the classroom. Each program helps students understand different parts of algebra instruction.

There are currently 26 videos to be watched or downloaded. These are really good – not just someone standing in front of a whiteboard.

K-8

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) publishes practice guides in educationto bring the best available evidence and expertise to bear on current challenges in education. In September, they published one on fractions. Based on current research, this guide discusses five recommendations.

1. Build on students’ informal understanding of sharing and proportionality to develop initial fraction concepts.

2. Help students recognize that fractions are numbers and that they expand the number system beyond whole numbers. Use number lines as a central representational tool in teaching this and other fraction concepts from the early grades onward.

3. Help students understand why procedures for computations with fractions make sense.

4. Develop students’ conceptual understanding of strategies for solving ratio, rate, and proportion problems before exposing them to cross-multiplication as a procedure to use to solve such problems.

5. Professional development programs should place a high priority on improving teachers’ understanding of fractions and of how to teach them.

As you think about how well your students know fractions, take a look at this document to learn what we can do to help.

Thanks Verno for the tip.

DASD Teacher

Henry is a 7th grade math teacher at Dallastown Area Middle School. He regularly looks for creative ways to motivate students. Below, he describes an activity that helped to give students a choice in their learning – a perfect example of differentiated instruction! If you are inspired, he reminded me that you can simply take off his content and replace it with questions appropriate for your students’ age. He did the hard work for all of us.

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I was looking for a way to let students creatively do problems while also going at a pace they felt comfortable with. What I came up with was A Journey through Math using SMART Notebook software. In this “journey,” students choose the difficulty of their problems based on our daily MUG shot problem (startup problem used every day). Students are asked to solve and explain problems before checking their answer and then moving onto another problem which can be of the same type, more difficult or a little easier – depending on where they are in the program. Students, using SMART Notebook, are able to solve the problems the way they see them done on a daily basis.

The overall design of the program and lesson was relatively easy. In all, there are a set number of problems that everyone must do. Students seeking additional help could end up doing twice as many problems as others. The background for the program difficulty is different (Easier – light blue, normal – blue, hard – red and the final two problems are in green). By scanning the computers, I can easily see where each student is at in the program.

Finally, to make sure students were familiar with how to use SMART Notebook tools, I created another lesson Fun with SMART Notebook. In this lesson, students are led through a number of tasks that involve

· typing into a box

· changing the size or font of a text box

· writing with the pen (they each had a mouse)

· using shapes

· moving from page to page

Overall, the lesson was a big hit. The students loved being able to move at their own pace and also appeared to pay more attention to the detail.

K-12

I highlighted OnlineMathLearning.com a while ago, but this site continues to grow on weekly basis (a dozen or so a week). It really is a powerhouse site to go to for ideas. The concepts start with Pre-K (yes, I said Pre-K all you Kindergarten teachers!) and go to college level mathematics concepts. The site is nicely organized with the topic all listed on the left side. Once you select a grade or course, you will see links for resources such as songs, videos, games, activities, and worksheets.

A newer part of this site is the Interactive Zone. Here you will find auto-scoring worksheets and practice to help give your students quick feedback on their learning and needs. You will be pleased with what you find here as well.

4-12

We obviously don’t use Glencoe as our textbook publisher, but they have a tremendous amount of online resources for free. This link will take you to resources made specifically for their Pennsylvania text. Here, you will find links for resources from 4th grade to Calculus. If you pick Geometry for example, you will have to hover over an edition, then move your mouse to the resource you want to see, then click on it. This is a little different than simply clicking on a link and assuming you will see a new screen.

The useful resources include Brain Pop videos up through Algebra, self-check quizzes, and vocabulary reviews. When you are looking for those resources to help struggling students, check out the ones called “Parent and Student Study Guide”. Remember, since this is a different textbook publisher, things will be out of our order. However, when looking at individual concepts, you can find some great resources.

K-12

This continues to be a tough time of the year. We now have had student issues, report cards, parent conferences… The list goes on and on. Teacher burn-out come to mind? Well, I encourage each of you to take some time to reflect on this year and your group of students. If you ever read Covey’s work, he says to “sharpen your saw”, meaning that we all need time to stop what we are doing and refocus. If we don’t we will continue to go down the same path and get the same results.

Bright Hub contains a wealth of information on K-12 learning and teaching methodologies. A recent addition is on How to Teach with Reflective Teaching by Linda Neas. She gives some good insight and ideas. You may also want to check out this article from The Teacher Trainer. You will read about different ways to reflect, but I encourage each of you to consider watching others teach and having others watch you. You will learn more than you can imagine and the experience will give you a great sense of accomplishment in your work. It doesn’t matter is this is your first for thirtieth year teaching. This requires a lot of trust and a little planning.  The University of Wisconsin gives these suggestions.

How to get this accomplished with no time you ask? Just ask your building principal or myself. Let us help! It may just be what you need during this time of the year.