Great Resources!

I am so blessed to have a colleague who regularly passes on to me great websites to enhance my math instruction. Many include activities that are excellent for use with a Smart Board. With her permission, I have included some of them below for you all to check out.

Math TV: students watch math videos and problem-solve
http://mathtv.org/


This is a great website-tons of educational videos, Smart Board lesson starters, etc. Definitely worth checking out! My students have enjoyed the videos as introductions to units or specific lessons.
http://www.teachers.tv/


This site provides activities in Science, Math, Art and more. They are great on the Smart Board but would work well for centres too.
http://arena.kidzclix.net/


Using Technology to Differentiate Instruction- There are lots of good resources and suggestions here!
http://www.theapple.com/benefits/articles/8484-using-technology-to-differentiate-instruction


Interactive Smart Board Activities for Math and ELA. I have found some great lesson starters on here.
http://www.teacherled.com/


This site has many fun games and problem-solving activities.
http://www.zoopz.com/zoopz/zoopz2.html


This is a British site with tons of great resources for many curricular areas. Several resources are well-suited to Smart Board use.
www.kented.org/uk/ngfl/index.htm


I hope that you find some of these useful in your own classroom. I know that I have!

First Steps Math Training- My "Big Ideas"

This year has brought the opportunity for me to participate in a First Steps in Mathematics training group in our school division. This course focuses on building the basic math competencies, the "First Steps in Math".

From our last session, a few things popped out to me as important areas that I need to be spending more time on in my classroom. The first of these is place value. Place value is an area that we all teach, but I had not been spending time asking myself if my students really understand what those places mean and the patterns that exist between the places. I know that they could all tell me that there are 10 groups of 10 in 1000, but do they understand that there are 100 groups of 10 in 1000? I asked my Grade 5 students the question "How many $100 bills would it take to pay someone $25 000". This led to a very good investigation in place value in which we used the Digi Blocks to explore the patterns that exist between the places. We have been talking about these patterns a lot this week and I feel that through this and through hands-on experience, my students are finally starting to really understand this concept.

Our discussion of place value then turned to teaching the place values in decimal numbers. The simple thing that stood out to me was teaching students that the units place is a line of symmetry. If they know that the next place to the right is tens, then they will know that the next place to the left is tenths. We are just moving into this in Grade 5, but I am hoping that this will help my students with this concept.

We also discussed the area of problem solving. There are 3 main types of problems that we can use with students. They are:

1) Result unknown- This is our typical problem in which students must find the end answer. ex- Leanne has 43 stickers. Her sister gives her 23 more. How many does she have now?

2) Change unknown- The original quantity must be changed. ex- Seth has 43 hockey cards, but he wants to have 75. How many more does he need?

3) Start unknown- The original quantity is unknown. ex- Devon has a collection of toy cars. He gave his brother 32 of them and he still has 46. How many did he have at the start?

I realized that I do a lot of result unknown problems, a few start unknowns, but I rarely give my students change unknown questions. Being aware of the 3 types of problems has made me aware of my need to start using different types of problems in my teaching.

Another focus was ensuring that students understand the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction (and multiplication and division). This is something that I am still struggling with how to effectively teach my students. Any suggestions???

Well, there’s my First Steps Day 2 training in a nutshell. Please feel free to offer suggestions for teaching these concepts and to also share any info from sessions that you are attending.

Why Start a Blog???

Why start a blog??? Well, technology has been an area of focus for me during this school year. I have been searching for ways to use it in a meaningful way in my teaching.

Last week, while at a Professional Development session, I was thinking of easy ways to share the information that I was getting with my colleagues at my school. It is so hard to find time to sit down and actually share with each other what we are learning! I began to wonder if there was a way that I could use technology to make this job easier.

So, the Math Musings blog was born! This blog has been created to offer teachers an opportunity to share the knowledge that they have gained with all of us! Feel free to share things that you have learned in sessions and any other valuable insights that you have gained during your teaching experience. Any math ideas that you think would be helpful are more than welcome!