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"Growing up in L.A., Khalil Fuller was obsessed with basketball shoes. By age 13, he was running a sneaker company out of his closet, buying shoes low and selling them at a profit. In the process-as he calculated the profits that would eventually buy him a car-he also became obsessed with the real-world usefulness of math. By high school, it was clear that most of his friends didn't feel the same way about algebra or statistics. His two best friends, after falling far behind in math, eventually dropped out of school. Fuller started tutoring other kids and had an epiphany: If he could connect math to something that a ninth grader cared about, maybe they'd actually want to study. The idea eventually became NBA Math Hoops, a board game where kids play the part of basketball coaches, drafting players based on statistics and doing simple math to take each shot. Suddenly, math problems become interesting: Should the Warriors have Kevin Durant take a two-point shot within 15 feet of the basket, or Steph Curry pull up for a corner three?"

"A while ago I reviewed iTooch Elementary School app by EduPad. I was very excited to see such a comprehensive app matching school curriculum. Today I am sharing iTooch Middle School. Similar to iTooch Elementary School, this is a very comprehensive learning app for Grades 6 to 8. For each grade, there are Math and Language Art, plus Health for Grade 6. The iTooch Middle School App serves as a shell app, hosting the 7 titles. It is helpful to know that each of the 7 titles can act as an app by itself without the shell app. "

"It might have been the banana piano. Or perhaps the bongos, made from lemons that students had plucked from the citrus tree at school. Elizabeth Little, who teaches middle school math and science, doesn't know exactly which of the hands-on projects she introduced to her remedial math class turned the class around. But by the end of the school year, all her math students, not just those needing extra support, were clamoring for more math. How did this happen?"

"It might have been the banana piano. Or perhaps the bongos, made from lemons that students had plucked from the citrus tree at school. Elizabeth Little, who teaches middle school math and science, doesn't know exactly which of the hands-on projects she introduced to her remedial math class turned the class around. But by the end of the school year, all her math students, not just those needing extra support, were clamoring for more math. How did this happen?"

"A math trail is an activity that gets students out of the classroom so they can (re)discover the math all around us. Whether out on a field trip or on school grounds, students on a math trail are asked to solve or create problems about objects and landmarks they see; name shapes and composite solids; calculate areas and volumes; recognize properties, similarity, congruence, and symmetry; use number sense and estimation to evaluate large quantities and assess assumptions; and so on. This is one of those creative, yet authentic activities that stimulate engagement and foster enthusiasm for mathematics-and so it can be particularly useful for students in middle and high school, when classroom math becomes more abstract."

Website has 3 sections: Math Playground - an action-packed site for elementary and middle school students. Practice your math skills, play a logic game and have some fun! Math TV Problem Solving Videos - Each math problems comes with step by step video solution, follow up problems, an online calculator, and sketch pad. Thinking Blocks - interactive math tool developed by classroom teachers to help students learn how to solve multistep word problems.

HeyMath! is the #1 E-Learning program for Math in Singapore - a country that has been ranked #1 for math proficiency globally in a recent study conducted by the American Institutes of Research, and consistently outperforms in TIMSS surveys. Over half the highest performing students in Singapore use HeyMath! as their core instructional technology resource for middle-high school math. We're also thrilled to announce that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (with the highest NAEP math scores in the US) recently funded a pilot study for a group of teachers in western Massachusetts to explore HeyMath! as a potential resource for MA teachers to strengthen their own mathematical content knowledge as well as to enhance classroom lessons and instruction.

Shout out to Andy McKiel and Zoe Bettess' grade 3 Math class in this post! "I love Instagram because it prompts me to take and share pictures of things that I might otherwise glance at then forget about. Before cell phones entered my life I rarely took pictures. Last week I took the picture that you see below. Almost as soon as it appeared in my Facebook feed via Instagram, my friend Kelly commented with, "shouldn't they be more concerned about weight than the number of people?" Kelly is a middle school math teacher so this picture was right in her wheelhouse of math prompts. (If you want to use the picture as a math prompt, you are welcome to download it)."

Online classes may be a relatively young instructional practice for K-12 schools, but experts already generally agree on one point: Research shows that virtual schooling can be as good as, or better than, classes taught in person in brick-and-mortar schools.

"CK-12 has long offered tutorials and practice exercises for middle school and high school science and math students. Today, CK-12 unveiled a new collection for resources for elementary school mathematics. The collection is organized by grade level (grades 1 through 5) and skill. The resources are a mix of videos and online practice exercises."

"In an effort to incorporate the iPads into small group intervention stations for middle school math, I spent a few hours collaborating with Cheryl Mutz, an NEISD district Math Instructional Specialist, to create an apptivity to support the study of sequences in 8th Math. The intervention apptivity would be used in a small group setting (two students to an iPad) and the students would have 30-45 minutes to complete the task."

"Delta Math is a free program that allows teachers to combine modules of lessons for their students to complete. The modules cover a wide range of topics taught in Middle School math, Algebra 1 & 2, Geometry, Pre-Calculus, Calculus,  and Computer Science."

"Algebra holds a lot on its shoulders. It is often referred to as the gateway to a successful math journey and for many it is the first time that math gets really really difficult. Pair that with all of the goodness that comes from middle school/early high school and you get a lot of pressure on a subject that has the potential to be one of the most memorable and powerful classes of a student's school career (that is coming from a former algebra teacher, so saying this with a 100% bias)."

"How do you ensure students who excel at math remain engaged? Heidi Williams intended to solve that challenge by starting an after-school coding club while she was a gifted-and-talented teacher at Bayside Middle School near Milwaukee. Instead of using pen and paper, her students created an interactive children's book on Scratch, the MIT Media Lab coding suite that lets users create games, stories and simulations. And the more of this kind of coding activity they did, the better their math test scores got. Now a computer science curriculum specialist at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Williams researches this correlation. One possibility is that the computational thinking skills developed while coding help students break down complicated problems-on and off computers, she says."

"A long-tested curriculum for middle schoolers that blends algebra and geometry concepts with the programming of games is getting a new boost. Bootstrap, which has been around for about six years, is teaming up with Code.org and the New York City Foundation for Computer Science Education (CSNYC) to help educators learn how to teach students algebraic and geometric concepts with computer programming. The middle school curriculum, developed by Bootstrap, is free and aligns with the Common Core math standards. The organization also offers paid professional development workshops at locations around the country."

MathTrax is a graphing tool for middle school and high school students to graph equations, physics simulations or plot data files. The graphs have descriptions and sound so you can hear and read about the graph. Blind and low vision users can access visual math data and graph or experiment with equations and datasets.

"Valentine's Day is less than two weeks away. In middle schools and high schools everywhere there will be students who are excited about it, some who dread it, and others who are indifferent. I always fell into the indifferent category. Wherever your students stand on Valentine's Day, the following two videos make for interesting lessons about Valentine's Day."