Okay… just one more post on other good web resources. We won’t do this for every post, we promise! There is just some really great stuff online that everyone needs to know about! Sites that don’t necessarily show up when you google “Help! I need a lesson idea for ___________”. (Wouldn’t it be nice if it was that easy… maybe someone should figure out a way to create a search engine that would come up with amazing problems for a search like that!) Here’s the list… check them out and then comment with your favourites!
1) 101 Questions – A site Dan Meyer set up to “perplex” you students! See perplexing photos and videos and ask the first question that comes to your mind. If you log in you can see all the questions that other people have asked also. I can see this as a nice “minds on” for a class… possibly turning into some great problems to solve!
2) Visual Patterns – Ever trying to come up with creative patterns? This site has a bunch of ideas ready for your using!! You can submit your own (or your students’!) patterns to the site also to add to the collection! This would be a great for the patterning to algebra unit in grade 9! They aren’t all linear either so use them for some great thinking in every grade!!
3) Graphing Stories – I love this site!!!! You will love it too… because we all love analyzing life through graphs! This site has a collection of videos that your students can watch and graph!!! A downloadable handout is on the site with four blank __________ vs. time graphs. Show your students a video, get them to graph what is happening and talk about it! I think your students will love it as much as you do!
4) Math Mistakes – I was reading a great resource yesterday (Malcolm Swan Standards Unit – it’s great! Check it out too!) that talked about the importance of exposing and discussing common misconceptions. This site may be able to help you with that. Teachers submit interesting math mistakes that students have made. The mistakes are interesting because it shows a conceptual error in student thinking. It’s good professional development as a teacher… but I think it could be powerful for students also! And it’s real!!!
5) Estimation 180 – Similar to the 101 questions site mentioned above, this site shows you a photo and asks you for a quantitative estimate about something in the photo. You are asked to explain what cues you used to estimate and then you can see what other people have estimated and why.
What Did You Do In Math Today? 