Teaching and Learning maths with middle schoolers

"I picked this idea up, like so many things, from Dan Meyer. He claims that it's one of those games-like chess or mancala-that just has always existed. My students have become enamored with the game, which we've dubbed "Lone Wolfs." It's an unintentionally awesome play on words spoken by a student earlier this year ("We're just two lone wolfs") The time spent trying to understand whether that was poetry or paltry grammer was longer than you'd expect. Anyhoo… Here are the rules: Choose a positive integer You lose if you choose the same number as someone else Lowest number wins"

"Student takes a picture of work with his high-res camera phone and texts it to the other students in his group. Student then leaves the room. This kind of remediation is really common. I will often run little clinics during odd liminal times of the day. The students who get left off the Socratic train during class often just need a small piece of direct instruction that they can back-fill under the conceptualization. I didn't see the phone coming. I can only imagine how that student's brain may have engaged differently if he had to copy everything I was writing while listening to me while hoping to go to lunch quickly. "

"Have you been gamified yet? Perhaps not a painful as it sounds, gamification is on its way to becoming THE buzzword of 2011."

"Heather MacKinlay's work as an engineer has taken her from the civility of Surrey to the wild west of Australian mining towns and multibillion pound projects in the Algerian desert. And along the way she has also become a successful painter. Heather tells Plus that engineering and painting are just different ways of looking at the world, and how her work as a cost engineer is all about understanding the big picture."

"ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2011) - By combining sophisticated mathematical techniques more commonly used by spies instead of scientists with the power and versatility of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a Penn neurologist has developed a new approach for studying the inner workings of the brain. A hidden pattern is encoded in the seemingly random order of things presented to a human subject, which the brain reveals when observed with fMRI. The research is published in the journal NeuroImage."

"In a digital world where we can easily "find an app for that" to help solve many problems, rarely do teachers have a one stop shopping place for all their classroom digital needs. There are many individual tools that can aid a teacher in retrieving student's digital work, polling/quizzing students or assigning work, but each of these tools usually requires a separate account. However, there is one, free, Web 2.0 app that brings everything together that you need for your classroom, including a social learning environment. The app that does all of this is called Edmodo. Here are just a few features that make Edmodo so great for teachers and students:"

"Ever need to find the LCM (same as the LCD) for a pair of two numbers, but you don't feel like spending two hours writing out the multiples for the numbers and waiting till you get a match. Of course you need to do this - a lot! Example: whenever you add fractions with different denominators you need to find the common denominator. That is the LCM. Here's a quick way to do this."

"Students need many concrete experiences with fractions to develop a deep understanding of the three models of fractions: area, linear and set models. Teachers need to address all three models in well-designed instructional activities so that students develop a rich concept of fractions that they can use to make sense of numbers, operations, measurement and probability. "

Here are some of the best places to ask your math questions, each at zero cost. Do you have a favorite that I've missed?

"Group work in mathematics is a tricky one. At times students can see it as a "sit-off" and chaos without any real learning can ensue. However, when it is successful, group work is an extremely powerful learning tool"

"We are in the middle of our polynomial unit and I decided now would be an appropriate time to teach exponent rules. I had prepared a concept attainment for the exponent rules before I talked to my coach. She suggested that we stray away from teaching 'rules' and rather teach the concept behind it. So basically, I only taught the concept of multiplying the coefficients and adding the exponents. When it came to the power to a power rule, we literally expanded it out and then multiplied coefficients and added the exponent. The more that we practiced the concept and writing them out, the more students figured out the shortcut of taking the coefficient to the power and then just multiplying the exponents. "

"The weather is one of the biggest external influences on human society, as well as providing the English with an inexhaustible topic of conversation. However, it's also extremely complicated"

Modkit is an in-browser graphical programming environment for microcontrollers. Modkit allows you to program Arduino and Compatible hardware using simple graphical blocks and/or traditional text code. Modkit's graphical blocks are heavily inspired by the Scratch programming environment developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. Modkit runs in your web browser and requires our Desktop Widget to communicate with your development board. You can use Modkit for free or join our Alpha Club to support Modkit and enjoy additional features before their release to the general public.

A selection of maths games for use in the classroom or at home. All games can be played with most age groups with a bit of modification if needed.

A fun learning game for two players with the aim of choosing the right fractions to complete your whole shield before your opponent. This fraction game worksheet can be used in a primary or elementary school classroom or at home with your child.

These activities are free and cover a range of topics including how Australians use water, what sports are popular, and which countries did Australians who were not born here come from. You can view all the activities as webpages or download rich text files (RTF) and modify them to suit your needs. You can find more mathematic activities on the CensusAtSchool pages.

Playing with the kids' toys on the weekend, I came across this car and became interested by the relationship between pulling it back and how far it would travel. Was it a linear relationship or something else? I set up an experiment. The results are in the video below:

"Looking around, there are lots of activities for collecting and analysing data using small boxes of Smarties. Here is my version. The package includes three worksheets to scaffold the collection and representation of data: Collecting Data - this is where the student collects their individual data and records the whole classes data. Collecting Data 2 - students take the whole class data and display in Frequency Distribution Tables. Representing Data - from the Frequency Distribution Tables, students create Frequency Histograms and Polygons. The Excel file is used by the teacher, on a projector/IWB, to collect the data in the class. It allows the teacher to collect the raw data and represent in Frequency Distribution Tables. "

Something I find incredibly valuable for my teaching practice is to regularly seek anonymous student appraisal of my teaching.

The MathCounts Club Program provides enrichment activities and puzzles for 6th-8th grade math clubs within schools - and homeschool groups may join, too! Participants receive a free Club in a Box Resource Kit, which includes the Club Resource Guide, two game boards to accompany one of the meeting plans, 12 MathCounts pencils, and a MathCounts tote bag for the coach.