Student Resources

BrainPop
Starfall
Cool Math
Math Playground
Brain Nook

Teacher Resources

Conceptua Math
Math Open Reference
Math Maps
Math Live
Free Technology for Teachers

Works with you

Conceptua Math provides interactive math visuals for lessons. These are created to assist teachers in their mathematics instruction in the classroom. there are 15 free tools to be used, and more if you choose to pay. It is designed to be used for instruction on fractions. There are guides that go with the visuals to help the teacher ask appropriate prompts and guide students learning. There is the opener, then the guided lesson (8-15 minutes long), then the lesson closer. If a student is falling behind in the learning during the guided learning segment, the teacher can refer the students learning to a differentiation intervention. The program was designed to help all teachers be good math teachers, even if they find math to be intimidating. The site is easy to navigate, however I am interested in the actual costs of the full program. There is an option to request a quote, but you have to be a teacher or administrator at a school, as well as having many variables that effect the cost. Seems to be simple enough and would potentially be worth the investment. I would definitely want to test run the free aspects of the program first.

Strand 2

This teacher tube video shows an interesting way of teaching students a complex math equation. It also shows how the student has an understanding of the procedures he has to go through the solve the problem to find x. 

Strand 1

Strand 1 of the math strands is CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING. It focuses on combining mathematical ideas. Building a conceptual understanding helps students to connect what they already know to the new math content they learn. This helps students to retain the information, as well as prevents them from making as many of the common errors.

Follow along

Math Live was created by Learn Alberta to help teach math lessons with animated stories. There are four different categories, number, patterns and relations, shape and space, statistics and possibility.The characters sometimes use manipulatives to solve their problem so you can have your students work along with the characters with their own manipulatives. This would be a great way to introduce a lesson or for the explore stage of a lesson. There are pauses in the lessons so you can stop and discuss or just pick and choose what you would use. These are great clear visuals and they are explained simply, introducing and explaining the terms that students need to know. The only place of concern for me is that distances are in the metric measurements not in feet, yards, etc. Otherwise I really like this site and the resources it offers.

Make it visible

Math Open Reference is a site that offers teachers animated and interactive drawings that show geometry terms and concepts. It is a good visual that can be pulled up on a projector and manipulated to give specific examples. It is also more precise than a hand drawn demonstration or something done on a Geoboard. This would be a great teacher resource. The site is clear and easy to use. However, the colors and graphics are not necessarily the most exciting so it would be up to the teacher to add any excitement or engaging aspects to the instruction.