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.

Watch and learn

Brainpop offers many videos and interactive activities on various math concepts (approximately 70 math videos). There are two characters, Tim and Moby, who explore and go through each concept. Most of the videos are around 2-4 minutes long, making them a realistic length for students’ attention spans. Some also have quizzes attached to them. These would be good for a formative assessment for students to do at the end of a computer center where they have to watch the movie (reinforce a concept learned in whole group instruction, or expand on that), play the game (to reinforce what the movie showed them and so they can practice), then take the quiz. I believe these short videos are easy to follow and engaging to students. I have used the science ones with first graders before and they were always so excited to see what Tim and Moby would get into next.As long as the movies are paired with other learning instruction and experiences, the movies can be quite effective.

Play to learn

This site is full of games that require problem solving and different math concepts. As a teacher, it would be cool if they were in sections by the content they reinforce, but it is not too hard to go through a few of them to find a couple useful games. One of the games that caught my eye for problem solving is B-cubed. There are multiple ways to reach a solution, so it would be great to break students into different groups and see what they come up with. Allowing them to create their own solutions then comparing how each group may have done it differently would be a fun way to explain how math is a lot of different paths to one solution. I would use this type of game as a station, each station group works to see how they can solve it. Then at the end of stations we could come together and compare the “paths” we took. If I have access in my classroom to enough laptops or ipads (or similar devices that can allow students to spread out around the room) I would do this as a whole group type instruction. Not all the games on this site would be useful for meeting common core standards, so I would be very careful about just letting students get on the site and picking their own game. It is nice because they remove all the excess portals that kids often times click on when playing games that takes them to other sites.

Equal Sharing

I found this teachertube video of a teacher explaining equal sharing, a component of the common core curriculum in fifth grade. She breaks it down into a simple, easy to follow process to make the connection between a word problem and the way it would be taught just with the symbols.  I would probably not use this video unless I was unable to go through the steps with the students myself, like if I had a substitute it would be helpful. The way she teaches this connects to the first strand of conceptual understanding. She connects life experiences of dividing up treats or toys or any thing else to share with "Equal Sharing" or dividing with fractions.
Sharing 1 of 3

A whole lot in one spot.

This is a helpful find. 
 This site has a math problem of the week, Ask Dr. Math, and areas where teachers can share/exchange ideas and lessons, or anything else. It also has a searchable, annotated library of useful resources and websites for teachers. The "Ask Dr. Math" section would be helpful to parents and students at home for when they have a question about a concept or term on the homework, or even when kids ask those interesting math questions. I would say this site would be primarily helpful to parents and students at home, but the weekly math problem would be a fun extra math challenge for students to have to solve before friday each week. Older students could use this site to ask their own questions and encourage curiosity in math.

The Math Forum

Learn big

Hey everyone!
I found this cool math manipulative site that is colorful and easy to use, it is the Math Playground! It has a fraction weigh scale that allows students to find equivalent fractions as well as compare fractions and decimals. This was my favorite visual to use. I would use this in the classroom to introduce different  math concepts, for the engage and explore stages of a lesson. If I pull it up on the projector and work through a couple as a group it would be very fun and get the students excited to try some them selves. Go check it out!

Pick an episode

Good afternoon! So I was trying to reflect on math lessons i remembered that incorporated technology somehow. I remembered I helped in a fourth grade classroom my senior year of high school and one day as a treat at the end of the day, the teacher did a math lesson but she began it with watching an episode of a show called "Cyberchase" from PBSkids. The episode was where the characters had to beat this bad guy, Hacker, by winning a skating competition. The perimeter always had to be the same, but the shape of the course could be changed. The characters discovered that even if the perimeter stays the same, the area, or the space inside, changes. The episodes are available in little segments or full episodes on pbskids.org/cyberchase/videos/.
Here is the specific perimeter and area episode link:
Cyberchase Perimeter vs Area Episode