Math = Love
This blog is written by Sarah Carter, a high school math teacher in Oklahoma. She has some very cool materials (signs, math journal ideas, etc.) that I think could be adapted for middle school, or even elementary school in some cases. One of my favorite ideas is a poster that has colors representing how a group is feeling during group work: green = doing great, yellow = question that can wait, red = question that cannot wait. |
Beyond Traditional Math
This blog is written by an elementary math teacher with a huge amount of experience. It really shows in their blog! There are so many amazing activities, resources, etc. One idea that I love, love, love the idea of having students do daily brain workouts with photos of objects. It's a "which item doesn't belong?" activity, but students have to describe mathematically why they don't belong. For middle school and upper elementary this could be an individual activity. For lower elementary, this could be a teacher lead group discussion. I will continue to follow this blog faithfully! |
Mr. Elementary Math
This blog has many wonderful ideas for elementary school teachers. Many of his teaching materials are available on Teachers Pay Teachers for free or a small fee. He has games, lessons, all kinds of materials! I particularly liked his pumpkin math investigation idea for fall. This activity would be so fun to do with students and would have them doing some actual math as well. Students make a guess about how many seeds will be in a pumpkin and then will complete an investigation with that. |
dy/dan
This blog belongs to Dan Meyer, a former high school teacher that has advocated for better math instruction and the use of technology in the classroom for real-world math examples. On this blog you'll find great ideas for incorporating interesting activities into your math classroom. He has a section he calls Three-Act Math which is a collection of math activities and interesting questions that gets students to probe deeper into their understanding of math. These activities get students to make predictions, watch examples in videos, and then work on the problem to see what actually happens and what the mathematics was telling them might happen. This is a wonderful resource, especially for secondary teachers. |
Mathy Cathy
This blog is by Cathy Yenca, a mathematics teacher. On her blog she has all kinds of ideas that she uses in her own classroom and reviews. This may be lessons, graphic organizers, teaching techniques, etc. She uses an iPad app called Kahoot frequently. She also uses Desmos very frequently. Desmos has more than just its graphing calculator functionality and I think she utilizes it in a fun and interesting way. I particularly liked how she had her students do the card sorts when they were learning or reviewing topics and her "experts" were free to jump out of their seats and be excited when they finished. |
The Math Maniac
This blog contains lots of wonderful ideas for teaching elementary school mathematics. She has activities, songs, etc. Using music in the classroom is a great way to get students involved and interested in a lesson. It makes a great opener to a lesson and is a great mnemonic device. She also has tips for organizing your classroom and organizing information and has recommendations for books to use in your lessons as well. One activity I liked especially was her idea of a math workshop with sharing time. I think it's so important for students to be able to explain their thinking to others and teach others. When they can describe what they think about something and can teach it to someone else, then you know they really have it down and feel confident. |
Let's Play Math!
This blog was written by a woman homeschooling her children. it contains so many fun and wonderful activities for teaching math. It is a great resource for ideas on how to make learning math fun and informative. One fun activity referred to the probability of running into zombies in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. This was a math-modelling activity. How fun would that be for middle schoolers? They would love it! |
Math 4 Love
This website has a blog, professional dvelopment resources, lesson plans, etc. The blog discusses lesson plans, how to better teach certain concepts, how to set up your math classroom for maximum learning, and more. This is definitely a site I am going to bookmark! I particularly liked the idea of a Loving-Math classroom. Their idea is to create a staircase math class where students warm-up, you launch the activity, they explore the activity, and then they have time to talk to one another about what they found. I think this would really help them to solidify concepts. "Loving-Math Classrooms are Thinking-Math Classrooms that, at least occasionally, blow kids’ minds." |