Creating Interest in Mathematics for 13 year olds

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Permalink Reply by Waimei on February 22, 2009 at 5:19am

sth to share:

http://www3.moe.edu.sg/edumall/tl/digital_resources/maths.htm

http://www3.moe.edu.sg/edsoftware/ir/maths.htm

got interactive resources and interesting videos for maths!

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Permalink Reply by Waimei on February 22, 2009 at 5:33am

i got some more..maths projects that are targeted at inquiry-based learning

http://www.indiana.edu/~hmathmod/projects.html

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on February 22, 2009 at 3:26pm

Read Dan Meyer's blog, he gives math a whole new spin.

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Permalink Reply by John Faig on February 22, 2009 at 4:04pm

Three ideas:
1. Consider making a class wiki and a different student or students takes notes every day. You could also use the wiki as extra credit for students who want to update it periodically. I have three students who update it regularly (for extra credit) and they take turns so it is not too much work.

2. Consider a group activity or group project once a week (and possibly count it as a quiz). If you use the CPM math text, they have lots of information about how to do group quizzes and the role for each member of the group.

3. I am going to experiment with reversing instruction and homework. If I can get the kids to watch a 10-15 minute instructional video AS HOMEWORK, then we can do the homework in class together. This also paves the way for more projects.

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Permalink Reply by greg on February 22, 2009 at 5:02pm

Hi Thomas,
One activity that I do with my students that really engages them, is to bring them to the computer lab and have my students work on games and other interactive websites. To make this easy, I just print a page from my website and have the students call me over when they are done with the activity. I stamp their papers and they work on the next online activity. I am happy to share my materials with you, just go to my classroom website, http://schools.u-46.org/index.pl?op=show&iid=2990 and click on the grade level you teach. For 13 years olds, you might want 7th or 8th grade. My students always ask when the next time we are going to do this, which means they really like to go to the computer lab.
I hope you can find something that will help your students.
Greg

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Permalink Reply by Sylvia Martinez on February 28, 2009 at 1:05pm

You might poke around the Math Forum for some interesting ideas. They have a "problem of the week" subscription that is very inexpensive and gives you access to high quality and fun problems and guides for the classroom. But there are lots of free things on the site.

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Permalink Reply by Thomas on March 5, 2009 at 12:07am

Hi,

Thanks for all your replies and information. You're a great help :).

I'm planning to do a online lesson for my kids as well. What would be a good platform? Blogs? Forums?

Thanks again!
Thomas

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on March 5, 2009 at 6:22am

Online line lessons are best done using Moodle but you could probably use a wiki. Let me know if you want to learn more about how. N.

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