National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

I am a proud member of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.  I subscribe to their middle school and high school math magazines and I have found so much I can use in the classroom.  I love their media clips and the comic exercises found in both magazines.

About two-thirds of my students are classified ELL or English Language Learners so I focus on integrating more literacy into my classroom.  Wednesdays are the day to use the KFCW method of solving word problems.

I have them list what facts do they know from reading the word problem.  Then they identify what it is that they have to find,  followed by things they have to take into consideration such as formula's, operations, do they have to find something first before something else.  The last step is doing the work. 

In this month's issue of the Mathematics Teacher, there is a lovely one page article on using the Dr. Seuss book "Sneetches" to discuss functions and inverses.  Such a fun way to do it and it integrates literature.

The site has some great lesson plans to use and has a great site Illuminations filled with tested lessons and some interactive material that needs to be done on the computer.
The lessons include the following materials so you end up with a complete ready to go lesson.  Yeah, Iit really helps when there is not as much time as you'd like available to plan and create lessons.

Equivalent fractions by NCTM

I stumbled across an app on equivalent fractions created by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.  This app has students use either circles or squares to make two different equivalent fractions.

The app shows a fraction such as 12/18 and the student has two opportunities to create two other equivalent fractions.  Note that the fraction is also shown on a number line.

The app has students use joysticks to create the new divisions and they tap on the unit to color it in.

Note that as a student creates the equivalent fractions, these also appear on the number line showing they are the same.   If a student creates a fraction that is not equivalent, it is easy to tell by looking at the number line so a student can redo the fraction.  I like this immediate feed back feature.

Since many of my students are unable to create drawings of both fractions and equivalent fractions, this can be used to help them increase their understanding of mathematics. I would say this app works for grades 4 on up to help reinforce and scaffold learning.

I do apologize about the direction of the photos as I am still learning to do many things on my iPad.