Math Competitions: Go, Team!
If you want to encourage your middle school students to” be the best they can be,” here are two competitions for you to consider. Both are national and aimed at promoting high achievement through...
View ArticleProbability in Real Life
Your students may find it difficult to believe that the concepts of probability really have anything to do with everyday life. If they did, would they still grow up to buy all those lottery tickets? In...
View ArticleSo You’re Teaching Algebra Next Year?
The prospect can sound daunting. You may even feel the need for a refresher in algebra content. If so, you may find these sites helpful. Patterns, Functions, and Algebra This college-level math course...
View ArticleLinking Math to Real Problems
Why bother with statistics in middle school? One answer: data analysis is one of the NCTM Standards and an 8th grade Focal Point. But even more important, in my experience, is that statistics links...
View ArticleRatios as Seen in Scale Factors
Ratio underpins so much mathematics in our real world that it deserves occasional return visits. These sites deal mainly with making and building and constructing; mathematically, they concentrate on...
View ArticleTriangles Online
How much you want your middle school students to learn about triangles depends on many factors you take into account as you plan. If lesson ideas that are “hands-on,” actually or virtually, enter into...
View ArticleAlgebra: Teaching Concepts
When we teach algebra, most teachers find that getting across the manipulation of expressions is far easier than teaching the big ideas that underlie algebra. Lately I’ve run across sites that help...
View ArticleTaking Advantage of Technology
The computer can be a distraction and a frustration, but it can also be a teaching tool. Usually, you hear that you should be using technology in your teaching, but no one gives an example of a site...
View ArticleCrippling with Compassion?
Strange title? It comes from teacher Ellen Berg’s article in Teacher Magazine, Teaching Secrets: Don’t Cripple With Compassion. From her perspective, “One of the major issues with American teachers...
View ArticleBIG Numbers
Those BIG numbers fascinate, don’t they? I’ve watched 5th and 6th graders gathered around the teacher just to hear more about the size of a million, or even a billion. Ths article, Thinking Involving...
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