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Mathematics has a reading protocol all its own, and just as we learn to read literature, we should learn to read mathematics. Students need to learn how to read mathematics, in the same way they learn how to read a novel or a poem, listen to music, or view a painting.

"Educational and developmental psychologists have tried to understand how skills and motivation are linked to academic achievement. While research supports ties between individuals' concepts of their abilities and their achievement, we lack a complete picture of how these relations develop from childhood to adolescence. A new longitudinal study looked at how youths' self-concepts are linked to their actual academic achievement in maths and reading from middle childhood to adolescence. The study found that students' self-concepts of their abilities in these two academic domains play an important role in motivating their achievements over time and across levels of achievement."

"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."

ORC enhances teaching and learning by promoting standards-based best practices in mathematics, science, and reading for Ohio schools and universities. ORC serves as a trusted source of easily accessible, peer-reviewed, high-quality, and effective resources.

ORC enhances teaching and learning by promoting standards-based best practices in mathematics, science, and reading for Ohio schools and universities. ORC serves as a trusted source of easily accessible, peer-reviewed, high-quality, and effective resources.

This is a must try site which provides an amazing 3D world which teaches English and maths core skills. Players race against two other randomly chosen online players of a similar level. The questions start out very easy and adapt to the performance of the player. The questions are read out and some are displayed on the screen. The player just clicks on the correct multiple choice answer to increase their speed. There is a download for PCs and Macs as well as apps for iPad and Android. There are teacher accounts which allow you to make logins for lots of children quickly. When there log in students will be asked to design an avatar. Because the resource requires a sizeable download it takes a little time to set up, but because it runs on your local device game play is very smooth and quick. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

A useful flash fractions activity. You can either read fractions or make equivalents. A good resource for whiteboards. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

The popular educational portal www.kidsworldfun.com is organizing a unique Little Champs Video Contest for preschoolers (3-6 years old) around the world. The contest intends to discover the very young bright stars around the world who are exceptional in a variety of activities such as reading, writing, singing, dancing, doing chores around home, playing with friends, gardening, and so on. Parents, who are interested, should make a video portfolio of their child, of about 3-5 minutes duration, stringing together the various activities he/she engages in at different times, in natural situations. The winners will be selected based on how well and happily the child engages in the task, how independently he/she is able to perform, how much effort is put in, and how skilled he/she is, in each activity engaged in. The terms and conditions of the contest are given at http://www.kidsworldfun.com/video-contest/ The Little Champs Video Contest is the second international contest that the KidsWorldFun is organizing, the first being the prestigious International Short Story Contest for School Children that debuted in 2016.

"An average person can read out approximately 120 digits/min. Keeping this pace it would take more than 158,000 years to recite the 10 trillion digits of π discovered this year and roughly 3 weeks to read out the 4 million digits visualized here."

This is a great interactive flash presentation how making and reading pie charts. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

A maths resource for practising reading scales in kilograms and grams. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

"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."

"Contrary to what you've probably read, you don't have to be engaging to be a great teacher-at least not in any charismatic and charming sense of the word. You can be relatively "boring" and lead students to outstanding academic progress, mainly by staying organized, being reflective, flexible, and in constant contact with an active and ambitious professional learning networking. Teaching differently requires work."

"Ah, listening, the neglected literacy skill. I know when I was a high school English teacher this was not necessarily a primary focus; I was too busy honing the more measurable literacy skills -- reading, writing, and speaking. But when we think about career and college readiness, listening skills are just as important. This is evidenced by the listening standards found in the Common Core and also the integral role listening plays in collaboration and communication, two of the four Cs of 21st century learning. "

Stimulating critical thinking using technology has the potential to create more in depth understanding of science and math content by students when engaged in learning activities which integrate in-class and on-line technology resources. Technology tools support stimulation of both inquiry-based and critical thinking skills by engaging students in exploring, thinking, reading, writing, researching, inventing, problem-solving, and experiencing the world outside their classroom. This is accomplished through learning content through the lens of video to multimedia to the internet (Using Technology to Improve Student Achievement, NCREL, 2005).

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

Why use Web 2.0 tools in science and math classes? The primary reason is they facilitate access to input and interaction with content through reading, writing, listening, and speaking. These tools offer enormous advantages for science and math teachers, in terms of helping their students learn using Web 2.0 tools. For example: * Most of these tools can be edited from any computer connected to the Internet. Teachers can add, edit and delete information even during class time. * Students learn how to use these tools for academic purposes and, at the same time, can transfer their use to their personal lives and future professional careers. * RSS feeds allow students to access all the desired research information on one page. * Students learn to be autonomous in their learning process.

This is a compilation of Karl's Transparent Algebra posts. He does such an incredible job of making his thinking visible for all of us in how he is planning his course for the upcoming year. I share it because I think it's a valuable example of a reflective practitioner and worth sharing. If you have any teachers who might benefit from reading some of his reasoning, I encourage you to send them to his blog!

The University of Kansas has a wonderful math website designed for middle school students called Matrix Learning. In their words, Matrix Learning "provides resources to improve middle school reading and mathematics achievement through the development of interactive educational games." There are several interactive games/activities that are not only educational and engaging, but fun! There also are videos and mulitplayer games. Many of the activities would present well on the SB and some such as Definition Training- similar to hang man- would work well on the SB. I also would encourage you to check out the videos from the University of New Mexico that are on bottom left of the page. So if you are a middle school math teacher I would highly recommend that you take time to scope out this very worthwhile site. ENJOY!