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"This Issue Brief examines 8th-grade achievement in reading, mathematics, and science for language minority students (i.e., those from homes in which the primary language was one other than English) who began kindergarten in the 1998-99 school year. Data come from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K), which tracked the educational experiences of a nationally representative sample of children who were in kindergarten in the 1998-99 school year. The analyses present a picture of students' achievement at the end of the study by focusing on students' scores on the standardized assessments that were administered in the spring of 2007, when most students were in grade 8. Students are categorized into four groups according to language background and English language proficiency. Additionally, assessment scores are reported by three background characteristics-students' race/ethnicity, poverty status, and mother's education-that have been found to be related to achievement."

Pythagorean Thm. Please add a comment!!! I will approve it if it is true. Just add a post it. No login needed.

This is a MUST TRY site. It's not often that I'm amazed be an educational resource, but I am with this one. Pora Ora is a stunning educational virtual world for Primary school aged students. Play truely fun educational games which practise skills in English, maths and many other subjects. The graphics and useably is superb. Online safety is at the heart of this site. The parential admin account can set the student's account to free chat with everyone to completely locked down where they have the world to themselves and everything in between. The site has a language filter and users can report any incidents of trouble. Also, the first task requires the user to complete an online safety task. The site is free with a few premium features coming out later. You have got to try this one! http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

Great math case study ideas. I think this would help teachers thinking about their own ideas for great math lessons.

"Kill Math is my umbrella project for techniques that enable people to model and solve meaningful problems of quantity using concrete representations and intuition-guided exploration. In the long term, I hope to develop a widely-usable, insight-generating alternative to symbolic math."

This Flickr group (which I just started) has "bad graphs" which I am collecting as a resource for math educators. Please apply to join the group if you are interested in adding your own resources to it. Otherwise, feel free to use the graphs and data visualizations we've collected.

LOG IN February 22, 2012 at 2pm Eastern US time: http://tinyurl.com/math20event During the event, John Mason will lead a conversation about multiplication as scaling, and answer questions about his books, projects and communities. All events in the Math Future weekly series: http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/events The recording will be at: http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/JohnMason Your time zone: http://bit.ly/wQYN1Y Event challenge! What good multiplication tasks about scaling do you know? Share links and thoughts! John writes about elastic multiplication: "It is often said that 'multiplication is repeated addition' when what is meant is that 'repeated addition is an instance of multiplication'. I have been developing some tasks which present 'scaling as multiplication' based around familiarity with elastic bands. Participants would benefit from having an elastic (rubber) band to hand which they have cut so as to make a strip; wider is better than thinner if you have a choice." About John Mason John Mason has been teaching mathematics ever since he was asked to tutor a fellow student when he was fifteen. In college he was at first unofficial tutor, then later an official tutor for mathematics students in the years behind him, while tutoring school students as well. After a BSc at Trinity College, Toronto in Mathematics, and an MSc at Massey College, Toronto, he went to Madison Wisconsin where he encountered Polya's film 'Let Us Teach Guessing', and completed a PhD in Combinatorial Geometry. The film released a style of teaching he had experienced at high school from his mathematics teacher Geoff Steel, and his teaching changed overnight. His first appointment was at the Open University, which involved among other things the design and implementation of the first mathematics summer school (5000 students over 11 weeks on three sites in parallel). He called upon his experience of being taught, to institute active-problem-solving sessions, w

"What if I were to tell you that Angry Birds had been surpassed in the App Store - by a game that involves solving algebra equations? Because that's what DragonBox did."

"A research team led by Carnegie Mellon University's Robert Siegler has identified a major source of the gap -- U. S. students' inadequate knowledge of fractions and division. Although fractions and division are taught in elementary school, even many college students have poor knowledge of them. The research team found that fifth graders' understanding of fractions and division predicted high school students' knowledge of algebra and overall math achievement, even after statistically controlling for parents' education and income and for the children's own age, gender, I.Q., reading comprehension, working memory, and knowledge of whole number addition, subtraction and multiplication. Published in Psychological Science, the findings demonstrate an immediate need to improve teaching and learning of fractions and division."

They Did Not Believe that I Was Able To Develop into a College Pro...Today I am ;)

Nice set of applets that let students explore fraction understanding from multiple perspectives and models. I love that they use a variety of models for fractional development, including bars (multiple versions), sets, and linear. From the site:  "Why Fractions? Fractions are one of the earliest stumbling blocks for students in math. Our goal is building conceptual understanding in fractions as a basis for comprehension in all later topics."

Geared toward developing good instructional strategies for entry level geo-science courses at the post-secondary setting, the suggestions can easily be applied to 6-12 setting and are just good instructional practices. Well organized and includes different perspectives and connected content. I thoroughly agree with the mathematical modeling discussion. It's worth reading

Here is where you'll find the course content for Spring, 2009. Assignments are here. Syllabus is here. GEOGEBRA: Throughout the notes, you will find many GeoGebra applets.  These are interactive Java applets.  To activate them, just click on them, and wait for the applet to load.  If you're using Internet Explorer, you may have to click on the "Allow ActiveX control" warning bar at the top of your browser, for the applet to load.  I encourage you to download GeoGebra yourself, or use the "Web Start" option, over at http://www.geogebra.org .  It's very easy to use, and a lot of fun!

Learning algebra is difficult for most students. Ask any student what they are learning in algebra and you will probably receive an answer similar to this (after - Why do I need to know this?). "Using Xs and Ys a lot, a bunch of numbers and symbols, and memorizing a lot of rules." This often comes with learning algebra without connection to anything students can relate to. When students learn basic math, they can make a lot of connections.

Statistics that lie! This is a great example of data that isn't reported correctly. The article decries the death of Netbooks, when in fact it is more about a stabalization of sales. I encourage math teachers to let students read the article and at least the first two responses. It's a great example of blatant misinformation. 

Algebra Maths wiki Project Based learning online classroom: Logic Inc is a fictitious consulting company created by Mrs. Norfar, a mathematics instructor. The company was created to enable students to develop real-world skills while learning Algebra I, Algebra II, Algebra III, Statistics and Geometry principals. This site is designed to keep parents and students up to date on what is occurring in the classroom. 

"Don't know much about the French I took..." but this looks like some interesting analysis of shapes in the physics world. Worth looking at if you 

I love this site. Every maths and business studies teacher should be using it. Children can buy and manage virtual shares at the London stock Exchange and the site is linked to real prices. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

We won't be able to afford such foa scheme here on South Africa. But it would be great. I can only dream....

Math Mama is Sue VanHattum, a community college math teacher interested in all levels of math learning, and the mama of a young son. I'm entering the blogging world as I begin work on an anthology about learning math.