Area Resources

Area and Perimeter Follow Me Cards: If you don't know what 'follow me' cards are, they are simple.  They are like dominoes where you have to match them together.  On each card you get a question and an answer.  The idea is that you match the question and answers up so the cards form a continuous line, or they can be read aloud and have the students stand, like a merry go round.  Here is the link to the cards: http://www.greatmathsteachingideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/44255740-Area-and-Perimeter-Follow-Me-Card-Sort-Rectangle-Square-Triangle.pdf

Quick Question Interface for area questions: It produces a question to calculate the areas of Rectangles, Triangles, Parallelograms, Trapezoid, Circles and Annuli (doughnut shapes).
Select which shape you would like to generate, or choose random to get any of the shapes listed.
Then calculate the area of the shape, and check your answer. http://www.interactive-maths.com/areas-qqi.html

Math Activities with Outdoor Area: Here is a list of tried and tested activities for maths to be used in the outdoor area including writing and recognizing numbers. My reception children love them!  http://coolcatteacher.visibli.com/share/T1j8dW

Algebra through Paper-Folding: Each pupil needs three pieces of A6 paper. They can then use these to form expressions for perimeters and areas.  http://www.tes.co.uk/ResourceDetail.aspx?storyCode=6193610

Guess My Rule

Some activities seem ageless. This week I got to try it with my summer intermediate algebra course.

Guess My Rule
Any number of players

A rulekeeper makes up a rule that gives a number output for a number input. (It should be a function.) Players take turns giving an input, and the rulekeeper tells them the output. If a player wants to guess the rule, they tell an input and what the output would be. If they're right, they guess the rule. Then that player makes the next rule.

 Today I started with the number times two minus three. Inputs came from all over. 12,  5, 10, 1... some shock at a negative answer. I encourage the students to record the results, hoping that it will lead to some ideas about what inputs to suggest. Organizing data is not a natural tendency. At one point they started asking 30, 40, 50...

inputs	12	5	10	1	30	40	50
outputs	21	7	17	-1	57	77	97

This is a great game for teachers and students alike to do in algebra courses.  It gets students use to other students thinking and lets them work in partners and groups to come up with solutions to their own problems.  This same skill set would work well with any graphing activity or any other higher level thinking set such as logarithms or quadratics.  Check out more here: http://mathhombre.blogspot.com/2012/05/guess-my-rule.html

Math Animations

There are two great web 2.0 tools today I am going to talk about the first is to create animations in the math classroom.  You make small animations, it is very easy to use and you can create flash-style animations.  You can post your animations to YouTube, Facebook, and even a blog.  There are pre-made clips where you can reuse them.  I created one at http://www.doink.com/ it was fun and for students in your classroom you can use this to post about questions or even solve questions.



pi and i by treverreeh, made at DoInk.com

The second web 2.0 tool over animation is http://gickr.com/ and it lets you instantly create animated GIFS online and for free.  Just upload pictures and create funny flashy slide shows with you and your friends, cartoons, previews, banners, etc.  Post them anywhere you can post pictures.  It is simple to use and fun for your students to create small videos.  There is even a gallery to show them to other people.

Using these two tools in your classroom will help engage students and learning math more fun.

Dice in Math

Humans have a historically documented fascination with dice. They are the oldest game implements known to man.  From “casting lots” in the Bible to backgammon in Ancient Iran, dice games have been around as long as recorded history.  It is no wonder that these simple formed shapes keep the attention of children. Kids love hands-on activities and dice are easily manipulated.  Playing simple games with dice seems like all to easy a pastime to constitute anything of worth.  However, children can be introduced to a number of mathematical concepts using these deceivingly plain devices.

There are some great activities you can do with students that involve dice.  Below featured are a few links to get your students moving around and playing with dice in the classroom.

http://kbkonnected.tumblr.com/post/12928926198/40-resources-for-dice-and-everything-dice

http://www.mathwire.com/data/dicetoss2.html

http://cte.jhu.edu/techacademy/web/2000/heal/siteslist.htm

http://www.nctm.org/uploadedfiles/conferences/annual_meetings/pdfs_for_jumpstarts/sarahnsarahmiddle.pdf

Activity Builder

In Smart Notebook 11, there is a tool called Activity Builder where teachers or students can create activities where objects react to actions by accepting or rejecting other objects or by triggering animations or sound.  The activity builder is a great resource for arranging, sorting, and labeling and for creating venn diagrams.

Here is a tutuorial over activity builder:



Here is how activity builder is being used in the classroom:



Smart Notebook is a great tool for teachers from elementary to post-secondary education.  Other features from Smart Notebook 11 is the ability to embed web browsers into your lesson.  There is now a crayon drawing tool , new gestures, and fade ink to fade any regular ink.

Here is the link for the website of how activity builder is being used in the classroom. http://teacherslovesmartboards.com/2012/05/smart-learning-moment.html/

Creating eBooks

There are many approaches to creating an eBook. You can create a book in a word processing program such as Open Office or Microsoft Word, add images and text then save it as a PDF file. Some of the eBook readers listed below allow you to import the file into them. Some will read the text aloud, some only allow you to view it, while others can play back sound or video files embedded into a PDF document, which can be done using Adobe Acrobat Professional.

There are many ways of creating different types of eBooks:

• iPads apps: eBook Magic, iBookcreator, Book Creator for iPad, StoryPatch, My Story, Scribble Press, Picturebook.
• You can also use Pages app for Mac computers can export files as ePub for iBooks.
• iBooks Author comes free from Mac Apps store to create interactive eBooks.

iBooks is the best buy since it is free on all Mac's and has more widely known file formats.  iBooks you can read text, play audio, and video through the book.

Below features how to create an ebook using adobe acrobat professional to attach sound files to text:

iFake

Students are constantly using their phones in and out of the classroom.  To use this in your classroom to your advantage, you can use the following two websites. http://ifaketext.com/ is a text message screenshot generator that allows you to make fake text messages.  It would be a great warm-up activity.

As an example, I created the one below.  But you can even have your students create them and embed them in a blog or on a classroom website.

Since most students have iPhones you can also do the same thing with Siri.  Since all of the advertisements from Apple have a famous person in them saying funny things, your students can create their own fake siri on the following website: http://ifakesiri.com/  The set-up is the same for the fake text website, since they are created by the same person.

Linear War

Linear war is best used as a review game.  Set up: Make your own deck: 11 lines.  Each line should be drawn so that it passes through at least two points with integer coordinates.  Mark each line card on the graph side with some insignia.  Decorations and alterations are made sure the do not obscure the line, but it makes it nice looking and personalized.  War: 2-4 players.  Each needs a deck of 11 face down cards, shuffled or not.  Set aside any extras, make one more if you need it.

Players roll the die for the combat.  Flip over the top card of the deck and follow the combat rule.  Play through the deck once.  The winner is the player at the end with the most cards.  There are different ways of playing the game.  Here is the link to the website with free materials on it: http://mathhombre.blogspot.com/2011/07/linear-war.html

Vector Dancing

Moves you never knew you had! Dancing Vectors introduces the idea of vectors as units of movement using the analogy of a dance routine! Each move from the routine is defined by a displacement vector (embellished a little for fun). Practice and perform a dance routine to music based on the instructions given as vectors that tell you how far to move and in which direction. Then use the analogy to help solve vector problems!

There are four dance moves: Vector a: jump. Vector b: slide.  Vector c: diagonal reach.  Vector d: diagonal twist.

This activity can be a little heavy on preparation but it is worth it! Not only is it a lot of fun but it is really powerful way of understanding the concept. There are a few things needed to make this activity really work.  The combinations are ‘Introduction’, ‘Verse’ and ‘Chorus’ and these are practiced individually before being combined. This is then done to music ‘Hot Stuff’ Donna Summer.  The introduction uses only a and b, the verse introduces a different combination with some negatives and the chorus uses c and d.  

There is much more on the website: http://www.teachmaths-inthinking.co.uk/activities/dancing-vectors.htm

Thinking Blocks

Thinking Blocks is a suite of learning tools designed to help students solve math word problems accurately and efficiently.  Using brightly colored blocks, students model mathematical relationships and identify known and unknown quantities.  The model provides students with a powerful image that organizes information and simplifies the problem solving process.  By modeling increasingly complex word problems, students develop strong reasoning skills which facilitate the transition from arithmetic to algebra.

Thinking blocks fit perfects with the Common Core standards.  The activities on Thinking Blocks site provides both guided instruction through tutorials and independent practice using the modeling tool.  The link to the website can be found here: http://thinkingblocks.com/

Thinking Blocks is a great tool for elementary, middle, and even high school students who struggle with problem solving and word problems.

Lure of the Labyrinth

Lure of the Labyrinth is a web-based game where middle-school students are immersed in a compelling story line in which an underground  monster world comes to life.  Players plunge into a shadowy factory on a mission to rescue their missing pet using mathematical thinking skills to progress through the graphic-novel story.  http://lureofthelabyrinth.net/www/index.php

Integrating a game into your classroom is easier than you might think.  The game encourages your students to explore and figure things out for themselves, while the teacher takes a supportive role.  Teachers are recommended to help them focus on the process of discovery rather than the right answers.  Most kids, in fact, will be fearless in their approach to the game--exploring, discovering, and solving problems.

You may, however, have some students that will want a little help to get going. If this is the case, first encourage them to approach one of their teammates for help. If your players are still looking for assistance and support, or you just want to learn more, we have compiled the following materials to help you support your students as they play.

Lure of the Labyrinth is aligned to Common Core mathematics standards.  There is a list of lesson plans you can use for your students over grades 5-8.  Over such material as adding fractions, functions, area and perimeter, and slope.  Lesson plans are located on this page: http://lureofthelabyrinth.net/www/contest-teacher.php

Here are the resources attached to Lure of the Labyrinth:
Puzzles: http://labyrinth.thinkport.org/www/educators/resources/puzzles.php
Graphic Organizers: http://labyrinth.thinkport.org/www/educators/resources/graphicorganizers.php

Math Games

Definitions: write down definitions of vocab words on index cards and toss them in a bag.  Have twenty definitions for groups of nine players or fewer and 40 definitions of groups of ten or more.  To start, have a player draw a card and read the definition.  The person who first names the word gets a point and draws the next definition.  When the bag is empty, the person with the most points win. Group Size: any.

Opposites: What's the opposite of black? Well, white. Tall? Of course, short.  But what's the opposite of Pythagorean theorem?  And this how the game of opposite goes: one person asks for the opposite of something (I normally give them index cards with pre-made concepts.) The game consists of making an argument for why one particular thing is something's opposite.  If you convince the other player(s) you win the round.  The best wins and gets a point.  If you can't agree you move on to the next player. Group Size: any.

Existential Rock Paper Scissors: Is a game in which players take turns naming a category or concept and then pitting them against another.  For example, if it was movies.  I would choose Jack Bauer and another might chose Walker Texas Ranger.  They must then argue which one "beats" the other.  Group Size: 3-10.

Brainy Baseball: A little movement game into your quizzes.  You have a literal playing field, rather than keeping score you move around the classroom.  Divide up your classroom into two groups.  The first member of the team who's up takes his place at home based and is asked a question by the pitcher (or read off an index card).  If he answers correctly, it counts as a hit.  If he answers incorrectly it is an out.  Three outs means the teams switch.  The first team to get to three runs wins. Group Size: 10-20

Quadratic Resources

Quadratic equations are hard for students to grasp, let alone teach.  Here are three resources you can use that are interactive and let the students try problems on their own.  The second one are just more ways of solving quadratic equations, by example.

1. Coefficient Guess and Check:  A GeoGebra sketch to help students connect symbolic and graphical forms. Took me a while to figure out the number right feature, but it was worth it.  This sketch lets students guess whether coefficients are positive, negative or zero, given the graph of an equation. The sketch tells them how many are correct, but not which ones, allowing for further reasoning.
2. 10 Ways to Solve a Quadratic Equation: http://www.mathman.biz/html/10waystosolveaquadraticeq.html
3. Interactive Factoring of Quadratic Equations: http://coolcatteacher.visibli.com/share/ZP4O19  A worksheet generating and factorising expressions randomly. The randomly derived questions can be selected using an Option Box x2 + bx + c (grade B) ax2+ bx + c (grade A) The method employed for factorising into brackets utilises sums and products to split the x coefficient term and grid multiplication. Select blue and yellow or white bordered areas to reveal method and solutions.

5 Angry Bird Lessons

5 Angry Bird Lessons ranging from quadratic equations, geometry, graphing, addition, measurement, to conic sections.  These are fun engaging lessons for students to accomplish in the classroom.

1. Quadratic Destruction: Given the equations of the curves required to destroy the pigs, can the students plot the graphs? This is an attempt to bring quadratic graphs to the world of the teenager.  http://coolcatteacher.visibli.com/share/Ea4NL
2. Enter the correct quadratic equation and birds fly on the right path and knock out the pigs.  There are four levels to this game. Each successive level gets more difficult as the information makes the calculation more challenging.  Before attempting this game, you should know and understand the basic properties of the quadratic function, findings zeros, the apex and it might be helpful to be able to solve simultaneous equations.   http://www.teachmaths-inthinking.co.uk/activities/angry-birds.htm
3. Graphing Puzzle:  This Graphing Worksheet will produce a four quadrant coordinate grid and a set of ordered pairs that when correctly plotted and connected will produce one of the Angry Bird characters. You may select which one of the characters you wish to make.  http://www.math-aids.com/Graphing/Angry_Birds_Graphing_Puzzle.html
4. Angry Birds in the classroom? What!?!?! Check out how I used this wildly popular game to help teach measurement, geometry, addition, skip counting and money!

5. Conic Sections: The following is about Angry Birds used to describe conic sections, especially parabolas.  Featured below is the journal article, I have been trying to implement the use of Angry Birds on the schools iPad. http://new-to-teaching.blogspot.com/2011/12/angry-birds.html

BrainGenie

BrainGenie is about helping your students meet your objectives.  As an educator the tool and practice is free and you can create classes within BrainGenie.  You can track the students you add to your lists and watch them achieve goals or see how long they were practicing on Thursday before the big test.

They have all math levels from Math 1-8, to algebra, all the way up to pre-calculus.  You can set goals for your students to accomplish.  Let's say locating points in the coordinate plane.  When students are practicing, they can watch a video, and see results.  They can also take the unit challenge and play multi-player games.  Students can win badges and go for a top spot on the leaderboard.

It takes a minute or two for the games to load, but it is a great way to have one-on-one competition with someone else and as the teacher you get to track their achievements.

The link is here: http://braingenie.com/

Infographics

Infographics are all the rage now in technology, pinterest, and you can even include them in your classroom to spice it up.  New infographics pop up daily on all sorts of subjects.  from mortgages to ice cream, estimating software to infographics about infographics.  This creates a great visual representation of concepts that you recently went over.

Infographics suit heavy information into a easily understandable visual snapshot of something that may otherwise be plain text, and can help widen the audience of a subject.  Many of the infographics we see have been created for the purpose of marketing, but yours will be strictly educational.

You can have your students create their own infographic for the classroom.  It could range over a story problem that they solved using different methods.

Below features the best web 2.0 tools to create infographics, whether that be the teacher creating the awesome infographics or the students creating their own.

A great site to gain more knowledge on how to design your own infographics is this link: http://www.queness.com/post/9942/how-to-design-your-own-infographics  I have made a few of my own for next year, since they do take time to make right, since I use Visual.ly here is a YouTube video explaining on how to make them.

New Pedagogies

As technology grows at an expanding rate, we are preparing students for a faster pace of life.  Where to get information, how to get it, and how to use the information they now have.  Some new pedagogies from Steve Wheeler at the University of Plymouth explore new learning forms that don't simply place old forms of new digital platforms, but reconsider those forms.

Education is becoming a place that is everywhere, students need to learn all of the time, not just in the classroom.  They need to learn at 10:00 at night as much as 9:00 AM.  Education is being streamlined and personalized for each individual, to incorporate all three anytime, anyplace, and personalized learning is a sign of a master teacher.

These pedagogies are called eLearning 3.0 Characteristics

• Distributed Learning
• Better called cloud learning where students have universal access to learning by all through the fact that our learning environments, content, services, and devices are becoming digitally distributed.  Cloud learning makes students learning easy for any place, any time learning.
• Enhanced Mobile Technology
• Wireless networks and mobile communications coupled with personal computing devices present a new means for students to access classroom information and communicate with peers and teachers, and for faculty members to alter the concept of the classroom.
• Collaborative Intelligent Filtering
• Intelligent filtering are tools to aid people to cope with information overload by selecting the most valuable and interesting information for each user.  Social or collaborative filtering is based on the evaluations of information made by other people.  How do students "mine" valuable information for loads of resources?
• 3D Visualization and Interaction
• We want our students to experience the virtual worlds first hand.  We want to allow students to move through the world and interact with the environment.  To learn and experience new situations.

The educational goal is not to incorporate technology for technology's sake but to create a meaningful learning experience for the student.  

Coordinate Games

Featured today are three games you can use to either introduce coordinate planes and geometry, or review for coordinate points using the following activities and interactive.

• Tic-Tac-Toe

• This site helps reinforce the skills of naming coordinates and graphing points on the Cartesian plane.
• http://www.nysparents.com/pdfs/nys_grade6_Coordinate.pdf
• http://betterlesson.com/lesson/12447/coordinate-plane-and-coordinates
• 3D Coordinate Puzzle

• Here’s one of them! A puzzle involving 3D coordinates where pupils have to use the given clues to find the buried treasure in a 3D grid. Great for a group investigation or a homework.
• http://www.greatmathsteachingideas.com/2011/09/26/3d-coordinates-puzzle/

• Battleship
• Interactive 4 Quadrant Battleships game for use on Interactive Whiteboard. Also contains templates for pupils to play.
• http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Battleships-6018206/

Number Loving

Number Loving is a great math resource from Laura Rees-Hughes and Sharon Derbyshire.  It is a very simple and elegant website that is easy to use.  It has many topics ranging from algebra, geometry, number sense, and statistics.  The resources are phenomenal they range from quizzes, activities, starters, investigations, and review games for all levels across the math curriculum.

I would definitely try to find your next lesson here: http://numberloving.co.uk/resources.php

There is also the Number Loving blog that includes top-notch ideas to spice up math lessons.  You can find new approaches and alternative math material or your classroom. Here: http://numberloving.com/

Rap in Math

Students love watching YouTube videos and incorporating them in to your lessons are educational, but also entertaining for the students to watch.  Tough algebra terms can be reduced to simply rhymes and raps like this school.



The same school even put together YouTube video for solving quadratics.




Implementing fun videos at the end of lessons is a great way to not only wrap up the lesson, but if you have flipped your classroom it is a great video to add to Khan Academy or other materials.  YouTube is a great place to find videos that are educational and entertaining for students.  (Barring language that is appropriate for your classroom!)

You can even have a project or rubric where one of the activities is to come up with a YouTube video for the students to put up and have the class watch.  There are many other videos out like this.

HippoCampus

HippoCampus is a great tool to use in and out of the math classroom.  Anyone can create a free account and begin to find material from Khan Academy and NROC.  You can mix your own "playlists" using content across different websites.  You can track media that is trending this week for your subject areas.

The goal of HippoCampus is to provide high-quality, multimedia content on general education subjects to high school and college students free of charge.  It is an open education resource to provide quality education to everyone.  You can find the link to HippoCampus here: http://www.hippocampus.org/

They have a great variety of different tools, videos, games, and activities the students can do in and out of the classroom.  A great activity I found uses factoring and tells you if you chose the correct factorization of a particular polynomial, found here: http://www.hippocampus.org/Algebra%20&%20Geometry?loadLeftClass=CourseCombination&loadLeftId=12&loadTopicId=7762

Fakebook

Use "Fakebook" to chart the plot of a book, the development of a character, a series of historical events, the debates and relationships between people, and so on!  You can get started by entering a name at the top of the page.  Then proceed to add friends, posts, comments, and profile information.  http://www.classtools.net/fb/home/page

"Fakebook" allows teachers and students to create imaginary profile pages for study purposes.



Students and teachers have the ability to embed, print, or download the "fakebook" page and upload it to a blog or blackboard site.  This could be a great math project for the students to do with famous mathematicians.  Each one could write about their lives and comment on each others "fakebook" page.

Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers are visual representations of a text or topic.  Organizers provide templates or frames for students or teachers to identify pertinent facts, to organize information, and to record relationships between facts and ideas within a learning task.  Literature helps support the use of organizers to facilitate and improve learning outcomes for a wide range of learners.  Overall organizers portray knowledge in a meaningful way which helps bring clarity to ideas as connections are made.

There are three great sites for graphic organizers in math:

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/graphicorganizers/math/ is a great tool for different cloud, tree, venn, and pie charts you can use these are free printouts and even come with concept diagrams for geometric figures, LCM and GCD, as well as easier ones for addition and multiplication.

http://www.dgelman.com/graphicorganizers/ are for upper level graphic organizers for algebra, geometry, calculus, and generic organizers.  They have ones for functions, graphing, and even quadratics and matrices. This one is highly recommended!

http://www.sw-georgia.resa.k12.ga.us/GO%204-8/4-8%20GO.htm is free word documents that you can alter for different concepts involving algebra such as area, graphing, and measurement.  It also comes with good geometric organizers for Pythagorean, quadrilaterals, ratio, similarity, and congruence.

One Page Solutions

Found this great article about writing in math class!

Finding ways to get students to write about mathematics has played a pivotal role in my development and growth as a math teacher.  Mathematical writing challenges students to express their ideas clearly and efficiently; it forces students to stop thinking of mathematics as merely equations and answers; and it opens up a new and unexpected dialogue between math teacher and student.

 Writing is a valuable skill, a necessary tool of scholarship, and a powerful creative outlet.  The more the students write in mathematics the more useful and interesting we all find it to be.

A great way to get students writing in mathematics is a new great activity from Mr. Honner it is the:

One-Page Solutions: have students choose a good math problem they like and write up a solution in one page.  Have them narrate their process and explain the choices they make.  They can also write about mistakes someone else might make, ore offer an alternate solution if possible, or suggest a new problem that's related but slightly harder.

Create New Questions: Have students choose a math question and write up to three new questions based on the original.  Make sure students understand the assignment is to create the question, not answer it. (This is crucrial!) Not being required to answer the question takes the pressure off, and it frees them to be more creative.

I did a snowball activity like this where they drew their own trig diagram where they either solved for the height or the distance from an object.  Some of them drew how tall a tree is, how high a kite is, how far away they were from a building.  It got the students off math and they could draw, then they answered each others drawing.  The link to the full article where the quote and writing came from: http://mrhonner.com/2012/05/16/the-write-angle-for-teaching-math-how-to-get-students-writing-in-math-class/

Multiple Solutions

Recently I came across a type of review activity you can use in middle and high school.  It came from Anthony Purcell or (@MrP_tchr) that included many different answers and open-ended questions.  Students often seem more intrinsically motivated to complete open-ended problems, because it is relevant in and outside of the classroom.

The math activity was designed for upper elementary level that offers multiple solutions.  The concepts covered in this project include a great amount of number sense concepts: factors, multiples, square numbers, even, odd, prime, composite, and triangular numbers. This assignment covers many concepts and a teacher could informally assess students in the classroom as they facilitate the learning process.


At the high school level have the students remember what the concepts are and have them try to figure out the pattern the blocks should go in.  Students cut out and glue the project together.  If you have a math journal have them journal about their math problem solving experience.  


The link to the page is here: Math Activity

A link to a possible extension activity: http://nrich.maths.org/5448/note

Here is an image of a possible solution and the link to the page it came from: http://educationalaspirations.wordpress.com/2012/04/28/958/

Other solutions can be found here: http://nrich.maths.org/5448/solution

Pi and e

I found these great sites where you can search for your name in either Pi or the mathematical number e.  This would be a great way for students to get engaged about what Pi and e is.  The program converts you letters to base 27 (using modular arithmetic which I just posted about.)  The digits represent letters.  This could be a great end of the day or beginning of the day activity when you are going over what e or pi is.

The two websites have what "base 27" means and the some random facts about what animal, planet, name come first.  It would be a fun activity for the students to do at home and record their answers, bring them back to class and see who has the first, second, etc...

Here is to search your name in pi: http://www.dr-mikes-maths.com/pisearch.html

Here is to search you name in e: http://www.dr-mikes-maths.com/esearch.html

Lateral Thinking

Lateral thinking is solving problems through indirect and creative approach, using reasoning that is not immediately obvious and involving ideas that may or not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic.  Lateral thinking is different from our normal perceptions regarding creativity and innovation, and it is an alternative to pure vertical logic and horizontal imagination.

Tools your students use to seek errors and statements to move from known ideas to creating ideas are such as the following below:

• Critical Thinking: judging the true value of statements and seeking errors.
• Random Ideas: first word that come to their head when the problem is read.
• Provocation Ideas: Wishful thinking, escape, distortion, outlandish moves.
• Movement Techniques: think of special circumstances from moment to moment.
• Challenge Idea: asking "why?"

Lateral thinking is an serious alternative to say training in creativity, and as such the tools must be taught and trained using a didactic and pedagogical approach very different form both the training in logic/analyses (vertical thinking) and the training in creativity/sensibility (horizontal thinking).  When taught in the correct way the pupils will learn strong thinking, as an alternative to thinking purely based in traditional vertical/horizontal thinking.

Example Questions:

1. 10+7=5, 9+6=3, 11+5=4, 8+11=7 But Tom was also right how was he right?
2. You are driving down the road in your car on a wild, stormy night, when you pass by a bus stop and you see three people waiting for the bus: an old lady who looks as if she is about to die, an old friend who once saved your life, and the perfect partner you have been dreaming about.  Knowing that there can only be one passenger in your car, whom do you choose?

Lateral thinking is a great way to get students engaged in the morning and get their brains warmed up for math since creative thinking is the best kind of thinking when it comes to math.  Here is a great resource for you to use in your classroom: http://www.smart-kit.com/scategory/brain-teasers/lateral-thinking-puzzles/

Modular Arithmetic

I didn't get to modular arithmetic until I was far into college, but with this activity students in middle or elementary school can use modular arithmetic.   This activity will help develop students’ problem-solving strategies and provide opportunities to apply and extend ideas to unfamiliar contexts. Students begin with familiar problems involving an analog clock and soon realize they already have some experience with modular arithmetic. Using this knowledge, they develop mathematical notation and ideas to help solve problems involving basic number theory. Applications to serial number coding are also discussed. 

There is an excel file and geometer's sketchpad file attached on the link.  http://www.nctm.org/publications/article.aspx?id=33335

By using a clock students can now understand how the clock words modular 12.  

When we perform mod operations, we are doing modular arithmetic.  Sometimes it is referred to as clock arithmetic because numbers "wrap around" when they reach a fixed quantity.

The lesson continues on from here, but this is just the taste.  If you are already a member of NCTM the teacher download is free as well as the rest of the material.  If you do not have a NCTM membership I really recommend getting one, it comes with great material and resources for math teachers.

Alleyoop

Alleyoop is a college readiness network for teens, identified this growing gap in math, learning through rounds of service testing in online tutoring and gaming.  Alleyoop has 4 areas for teens: guidance, one-on-one, activities, and about me.  Parents and teachers also see the teen dashboard area.

You can pay for Yoops (they are coins that teens spend on learning activities.  You can either buy them or earn them to start.)  The cool thing about Alleyoop is the "about me" section where teens can track their progress and learn more about themselves, it tracks topics mastered, challenges completed, missions accomplished and other things like classes, grades, and school.

Alleyoop contains other programs like MyMathlab and other yourteacher.com.  It gives video tutorials and practice problems, it even gives you a challenge at the end.

Fish Populations

Net Gain, Net Effect

Objective: Students will desribe the evolution of fishing techniques, and interpret the changes in technology on fishing populatons.

Method: Students conduct a simulation to explore the evolution of fishing and the effects of changing technology on fish populations.

This would be a great way to introduce not only going outdoors in to the classroom, but a series on differential equations and what effects does it have on our population.  This lesson comes from Project Wild.   links students and wildlife through its mission to provide wildlife-based conservation and environmental education that fosters responsible actions toward wildlife and related natural resources. Through the use of balanced curriculum materials and professional training workshops, Project WILD accomplishes its goal of developing awareness, knowledge, skills and commitment. 


You can find a page for educators here: http://www.projectwild.org/educators.htm  where you can find resources and framework for you classroom lessons.