For those of you who know me, this topic will be a surprise. I do not possess a "math brain". having grown up in a time when it was OK for girls to shun math and just be a "baker", following the recipes and getting good grades. That said, I am always fascinated by the way mathematicians seem to puzzle through things. Hopefully, some of the resources I share here, will help you bring more excitement and a higher/deeper level of thinking to some of your math classes.
Today I asked John P. to explain the math behind a simple number puzzle that I wanted to use in a breakoutedu game. I knew the answer, through trial and error, but wanted to know how someone who loves math would think it through. He very kindly obliged and now I have a better idea of how a student could/should go about solving this problem: xx+yy+zz=xyz when x, y and z are different single digit numbers. I have another friend who teaches math grades 5-9 and I always used to spend my before school time in his classroom, watching his math extra help sessions- learning how my students solved problems, and then using some of these strategies in my computer applications classes with them.
One of the people I always look to for math online is Dan Meyer. Dan has been speaking and blogging about math for a long time and comes up with great real world ways to teach and learn. You can check out his blog here and listen to his 2010 TED talk below.
Jo Boaler offers a wealth of resources for math. She has a great book out calledMathematical Mindsets, has a fantastic website (You'll love her Week of Inspirational Math lessons) and will be offering an online course for teachers this summer.
Although I generally think of Alice as the goddess of Google Classroom, she actually teaches math. She recently posted a great blog post about how to update your lesson plans- using a lot of math examples. One of her references, which was new to me, was to OpenMiddle.com. This is from their About section, "Open middle problems require a higher depth of knowledge than most problems that assess procedural and conceptual understanding. They support the Common Core State Standards and provide students with opportunities for discussing their thinking." This site offers great math problems- K-12.
Another math site that I checked out recently wasSteve Wyborney's Splat blog post. Steve is math educator who also writes interactive math books for Scholastic. Check out his free downloads of his lessons.
If you're looking for some great ideas to relate math to music, to sports, to fashion... check out Thirteen.org's Get the Math for lots of challenges, videos and more.
No post about math would be complete without mentioning Math Playground. Colleen King's site has been around for quite a while and has so much to offer across all age groups. Aside from the breadth and depth of the content, Colleen makes sure that all games on her site are appropriate for students and that they are not just an ad for something. Not just shoot 'em up games, all of the games she creates or accepts on her site have strong pedagogy behind them. She takes safety to heart and you can allow even young students freedom to explore on Math Playground. Many of the games, over 100 at last count, can be played on mobile devices too. Looking for ways to model math problems with students. Thinking Blocks are exclusively on Math Playground.