Math Sites with K-12 Resources

Presentation at CEA Convention -- October, 2002

Below is a list of sites that have mathematical resources that could be used for K-12 education. For each site there is a description of the sorts of things that you might find there and links to some examples.

A few caveats before we begin:

1. The web is constantly changing. There be more, less or different stuff at any of these sites in the future.
2. The quality of the materials is not uniform, even at a good site. It is still necessary to look things over and select the good and useful items.
3. I do not have control over any of these sites, so do not send me comments about their contents, errors, etc. Send that information to the authors of the materials.
4. However, if you find broken links, another useful site or example, or have other suggestions for the improvement of this page, send them to me via email to rpruim@calvin.edu

Featured Sites

Quotation Servers

Another source of quotations with a somewhat different emphasis (more quotations relating to education) is the Mathematical and Educational Quotation Server at Westfield State College.

Project Interactivate

Here are a few examples:

• Tesselate: Make tesselations based on triangles, rectangles and hexagons.
  • A sample lesson (there are others for tesselations, too).
  • A sample discussion (again there are more)
• Fraction Four: Answer fraction, decimal percent questions to places connect four pieces.
• Clock Arithmetic: Visual representation of modular arithmetic on "clocks" of various sizes. (Note: this mathlet has some less than desirable behavior when used repeatedly. Here is a better mathlet as part of an article on Math Art Posters by Dr. Laurie Burton [5-8])
• Coloring Pascal's Triangle: Explore patterns that appear when coloring multiples of a fixed number within Pascal's triangle.

illuminations.nctm.org

i-Math investigations

Ready-to-use interactive, multimedia math lessons (each is built on a mathlet)

• includes links to many (all?) of the E-examples at E-Standards
  • Understanding the Pythagorean Relationship is an E-example.
• Exploring Connections between Mathematics and Art (under construction as of 10/16/2002)

Inquiry on Practice

vidio vignettes, research reports, and articles for teachers

• Determining the Impact of Applet-Based Instructional Materials...

Selected Web Resources

Reviewed mathematics education web resources

• Internet-Based Lesson Plans: classroom-ready lessons developed by expert teachers
• Do It With Dominoes [K-2]: A number of lesson ideas using dominoes to teach about addition.

Interactive Mathlets

Mathlets you can use to explore math and create interactive lessons

• Fraction Game [3-6]: Solitaire fraction game (See also Fraction Track, a 2-player fraction game)
• Spreadsheet and Graphing Tool [6-12]: Graph formulas with parameters, then use sliders to adjust values of parameters and watch the graph respond.
• Sound Wave [9-12]: How do computers represent sound? Watch a simulation of a how a sound wave travels. Of particular interest is the ability to mark one air particle and watch its motion.

Math Forum at Drexel

• Search by Level and Subject to find lesson plans, problems and puzzles, software, projects, public forums, etc.
• Internet Mathematics Library includes a specialized search engine.
• Ask Dr. Math has answers to common questions about mathematics. The archive is searchable and organized by grade level.
• Teacher2Teacher This is similar to Dr. Math, but answer questions about teaching mathematics. Search by grade level, mathematics subject area, educational subject area and key word to see if anyone has an answer to your teaching questions. If not, you can post your own questions.
• Problems of the Week -- again for a variety of levels and mathematical subject areas. Also links to other problem of the week pages.
• Much, much, more!

E-Standards

Many (perhaps all) of this are available through the Illuminations site mentioned above.

• Tangram Puzzles [K-2]: This mathlet allows students to move, rotate, flip and color a set of tangram pieces. Students can make their own pictures or attempt to make a target image. [Standards: Problem-solving, Geometry]
• Fraction Track [3-5]: A game involving fractions represented on a number line. [Standards: Communication, Number and Operation]
• Distance, Time, and Speed Relationships via simulation [3-5]: This simulation shows a boy and a girl "running" in opposite direction across the screen. While they are running across the screen, their positions as a function of time are plotted on a graph. Starting positions and speeds can be adjusted. [Standards: Algebra]
• Comparing Mean and Median [6-8]: A data set is represented by points on a number line. As the points are dragged around, one can watch the effect this has on the mean and median of the data set. [Standards: Data Analsysis and Probability]
• Exploring Linear Relationships [9-12]: The mathlet shows the graph of a linear equation in slope-intercept form (y=mx+b). Sliders can be used to adjust the slope and interecept values to see how the graph responds. [Standards: Problem Solving]

Center for Mathematics Education at the Education Development Center

The EDC has many projects and lots of information. Here are two items that may be of some interest:

• Problems with a Point [6-12]: Search for problems on various topics. Includes problems, hints, solutions, and information for teachers on how to incorporate the problems. HTML (standard web format) and pdf versions (better for printing) are available for most things.
• Connecting with Mathematics

Other places to look

Google search engine

• A pentomino problem solver by David Eck (who writes very nice applets and is the author of JCM, the Java Components for Mathematics toolkit).
• Information on Pentomino Puzzles, a site with some solutions to pentomino puzzles and a long list of other links.

Some things of mine

• My Home Page is a good starting point
• Some Course Materials ordered by subject and by course. Some subjects are more complete than others. On course web pages look under "mathlets" or "web overheads" or something simliar to find interactive things.

Math Archives

• a list of Interactive Web Pages
• Graphing Calculators page

Sites with Problems, Puzzles, and Challenges

• Problems with a Point (from EDC, mentioned above)
• Math Forum Problems of the Week (mentioned above)
• "Math Challenges for Families", a joint project of the NCTM, the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, and Widmeyer Communications, with support from the NSF and the U.S. DOE. Figure This! is designed to provide an exciting and family-friendly way to become more involved in learning math. This is essentially a collection of mathematical problems and puzzles to be solved.

Sites with Lesson Plans, Worksheets, and Simliar

• Math Central offers an Internet service for mathematics teachers and students from kindergarten to grade twelve. This is a Canadian site (U. Regina), so its categories for grade levels and for mathematical topics are not exactly the same as those used by most American sites.

  The most interesting part of this is probably the resource room, a place where teachers have submitted resources and information on how to use them in the classroom. Here are two examples:

  • Aboriginal games
  • 30 Hands-on Activities for grades 4-6
• Lesson plans from the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse
• Explorer, a collection of educational resources developed jointly by the Great Lakes Collaborative and the University of Kansas UNITE group, this site has a collection of educational resources (instructional software, lab activities, lesson plans, student created materials ...) for K-12 mathematics and science education.

  Most of the resources at this site are electronic versions of paper documents (pdf and hqx formats) describing activities, labs, games, and the like.

• AskERIC contains lesson plans on various math topics at various grade levels
• Mathematics Lessons that are fun! fun! fun! by Cynthia Lanius (Rice University)

Humor

• Math Comic Strips
• Bamdad's Math Comics

Miscellaneous

• Mega Math
• Building a Better File Cabinet: Virtual Resources for Teachers (slides from a talk by Eric Hsu). Among other things, these slides have links to things like newgroups and emails lists not really covered here.
• "Mudd Math Fun Facts" created by the mathematics department at Harvey Mudd College.
• QuickMath offers an automated service for answering common math questions over the Internet.
• Kid Sites -- Math has a list of math related sites for kids.
• Mathematics Education Partnership Program Teacher/Student Resources page (sponsored by the NSA)
• Mathematical Quotations Server

This page maintained by:
Randall Pruim
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Calvin College
rpruim@calvin.edu

Last modified: Thursday, 24-Oct-2002 17:28:05 EDT