PBS Math Club

 

I am always on the lookout for videos, interactive sites, and real life applications of math but it is often hard to find all three together.  PBS has a site that has so much to offer all grades.  This general site has six different resource area ranging from K-8 mathematics, to various high school strands.  I like that they have the strands for high school broken down because that makes it easier to find exactly what one is looking for. 

I clicked on High School Functions to see what they had.  On the left side, there is a list of the main topics being covered under the umbrella of functions. If one of those topics is clicked, it shows subtopics associated with the general topic.  For instance, if you click on building functions, you'll find two sub topics.  One is on modeling functions between two quantities and the other is on building new functions from existing functions.   

Next you decide what grade level you want to look at and select that.  I chose 9 - 12 because that is the usual group of students I work with.  I have my choice of 5 videos that run about 26 minutes long, two interactive activities where one deals with valentine cards and the other is on building virtual rockets. In addition there are 12 webpages linking to the appropriate videos in Khan Academy, and for the teacher there are multiple links to professional trainings and to RTI videos.

I clicked on the interactive valentine cards which allowed students to explore the relationships between two variables.  It could either be assigned directly or used with google classroom.  It provided both teacher support materials and support materials for the students. The only issue I had was that when I clicked on the launch button, I ended up with something exploring the relationship between arm distance and height on a scatter plot.

Since this site uses Google classroom, you can use a google e-mail address to log in.  When you first log in, you can choose the subject, type of lesson, and how you want it sorted.  Under type of lesson, they list video, interactive, interactive lesson, lesson plan, media gallery, audio, image, document, webpage, or collection.  Unfortunately, they don't have all of these available for each topic but with a simple search you can find some interesting lessons.

Under interactive lessons, I found things like square rimmed tricycle - radius and circumference, or cooking with Bill Nye for independent and dependent variables, or shower versus bath, ratio and rate.  I looked at the Bill Nye lesson and it took you to a website called cooking with Bill Nye.  The first thing it asked you to watch a 40 second video in which Bill Nye talks about cooking pasta in two different pots, one with a lid, one without and the student is asked to make a prediction.

After the prediction is saved, the student moves on to the second page where we watch a 27 second video where Bill Nye explains why it heats faster with the lid on.  The student is asked if they changed their prediction from step one.  Once done, the student moves on to the third page where the student watches a 46 second video and then fills in the missing data in the chart.  Then the student decides whether time or temperature is the dependent or independent variables and explain their thinking. The final page talks about how much money can be saved by using a lid.  

The lesson plans are set up as actual lessons which come with the grade level, links to movies, links to resources such as charts, etc, and the answer key. It tells you how to do the lesson, which item to show or do when and includes assessment information along with the standards covered.  This lesson is all set to go and can be assigned via google classroom or it could be run by the teacher as a class lesson.

There is so much material here that can be used to create a student centered learning experience, have something special available when a sub is there or used in a flipped classroom.  If you have time, check it out.  I'd love to hear what you think about this.  Have a great day.