Edmonton teacher, Leslie Friesen, passed on this interesting article from Scholastic. The author makes a good case for using the different pieces of the popular Lego sets to illustrate fractions in different ways. There are some printables to help students use the manipulatives. I thought it was good advice given to pre-pack the pieces you need in a bag rather than give the set out.—
The URL: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/top-teaching/2013/12/using-lego-build-math-concepts ]]>
Back in January, I recommended a site that talked about shortcuts and thinking about a few math concepts in a different way. My thanks goes out to Edmonton teacher, Stephanie Gower, who offered me some conversation and a look at another resource that addresses why math shortcuts out of context can be troublesome. Nix the Tricks is a no-cost download pdf book that looks at common math tricks and remedies for teaching them in class. At first glance, the site uses phrases like ‘buy the book’ but know that the download is a Creative Commons licenced, no-cost one.—
The URL: http://nixthetricks.com/ ]]>
The math purists will probably bristle at me for this one but I loved this site that long time List member, Sharon Affeld sent along. It demonstrates 7 different ways to think about math concepts using fingers, lines and illustrations. I know — it doesn’t replace ‘real’ math skills but thinking about numbers in different ways may be fun for those who are strong at math and perhaps one or two tricks might help some struggling with a concept.—
The URL: http://www.ba-bamail.com/Content.aspx?emailid=13722&memberid=929934 ]]>
Here’s a fun little Flash interactive that asks students to view an arrangement of shapes (similar to a tangram) and then they are mixed up. Students then move and rotate the shapes with their mouse to re-assemble the original arrangement.—
The URL: http://www.visualmathlearning.com/Games/shapeology.swf ]]>
When I was a student teacher in the 80’s, I used this video in a math unit. This week, I’m preparing a lesson in SketchUp about the Golden Section and wondered if I could find it online since my old VHS of it is long gone. I only need about 5 minutes from the 7:00 mark to cover this particular subject but the whole 27 minute video is well worth a look.—
The URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_ZHsk0-eF0 ]]>
Long-standing Teacher List member, R. Chartrand, offers a variety of math puzzles for everyone. Teen Math Puzzles is divided into categories that will challenge, stimulate and help your students learn.—
The URL: http://www.teenmathpuzzles.com ]]>
I’ve recommended this site before but it warrants a repeat after my pal Andy reminded me of it. IXL offers some no-cost activities that students (or your own children at home) can use to bone up on their numerical talents. The beauty of this resource is that you can choose your country at the top edge, then your local curriculum to line up the most relevant activities.—
The URL: http://ca.ixl.com/ ]]>
Red Deer teacher, Rene Vandervlis, recommended this online graphing calculator, noting that students “can graph any function, add sliders to show how the graph changes as certain parameters do, and print the graphs or import them into other documents. It also graphs and shades inequalities, and has features that allow you to restrict the domain and range.” Rene goes on to suggest that this might be a good alternative to TI devices.—
The URL: https://www.desmos.com/ ]]>
Here’s a fun math interactive to teach students to use fractions to save characters in a medieval setting. It’s Flash-based and you’ll want students to use earbuds. (There’s no mute button for the background music!)—
The URL: http://mrnussbaum.com/castle1/game2.swf ]]>
Tomorrow is Pi Day! Edutopia has put together seven sources of Pi Day activities. Even if you don’t teach “the subject with numbers” you might find some of these collections of Pi Day ideas interesting.—
The URL: http://bit.ly/N9YQiJ ]]>