Math: Thinking Mathematically on the Internet

Chapter 8

Teaching With the Internet K – 12: New Literacies for New Times

Leu, Leu, and Coiro

The National Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathemetics has changed from the 1998’s version to an updated version where math is to make sense for the students. (I printed out two pages of this above site regarding the fourth grade Math Curriculum Standards.)

This past week on the Smart Board I saw children who were seeing two different dominos with dots and then clicking on the correct count for the total dots seen. This activity fosters instant visualization of addition facts. Now days the NCLB is including a new term called numeracy that is informed acquisition, critical evaluation, problem solving, and communication of math. They are linking numeracy to literacy in their federal legislation.

In searching out my favorite directory site as the text suggested we do, the main one suggested was the Eisenhower site but it is by subscription only presently at this time. So other sites that I checked out were the Math Archives, the Math Virtual Library, and the Math Forum. (Some of the other sites would not come up so the addresses must not be current. I did not check to see if I could locate them on Google or another site. Sometimes you can locate them elsewhere.)

On the Math Virtual Library, I could find material by grade level. There were lots of math activity suggestions given. Everything from time, money, and clocks to word problems for children is located here. It is a site for Elementary to High School age where information can be found on all topics of math.

The Math Archives Site had lots of Lesson Plan links for K- 12th grade. These links lead you to many other links.

I particularly liked the Math Forum @Drexal. Through this site I linked to a Pro Teacher. Community 4-8 site where teachers could ask questions. I was able to find seven pages of helpful hints in teaching perimeter and area from other teachers. So many wonderful ideas were listed there that were helpful.
For the Internet Workshop activities, I was able to locate a few sites that would be helpful in a working on math problems. There was a Brain Teasers Site that gave one math problem a week. Then listed the following week the answer and the next new problem to solve. The Interactive Math Miscellany and Puzzles site had a lot of interesting math activities for children to do also. There were links to math games and Sylvan Math. There were sites for teachers and parents with lots of free materials listed. Its goal was to make math really fun for children so there are many interesting activities. You can link to Cut the Knot here also which has even more exciting math activities. These could be incorporated into a math workshop.

Then I checked out some registry sites for Internet Projects that a fourth grade class could perform. I felt that the Food Prices Around the World site would be appropriate. It listed several different foods that children were to price. Then it could be uploaded to US Site. They could then look at the World Food Price information. This site has been available for sixteen years. Contact person is david@landmark-project.com The other site that would be a good one was listed as Create a Graph at Kid Zone. It is a very useable site. You just fill in the information that is needed. You select the kind of a graph you want to create. It has you list the Titles and then the number information needed.

Finally, the text wanted three websites that meet the needs of the fourth grade class using the criteria. I liked the text book suggestion of the Best Weather site which met all of the criteria mentioned in Chapter three of the text.

Using Google I found a couple more Web Quest Sites that I book marked. One was E-Mints from the Missouri Teachers and E-Mints National Center. There were eight sites listed. I choose two that I liked. One was Plan an Authentic Halloween Party using a budget. Then the other one was Plan Your Bedroom using a $500.00 budget. They are to provide a floor plan, do a Power Point Presentation, and graph how they spent the money. The last site I selected was Interactive Web Sites PF-6 Teachers and Students. The Web Quest selected here was Do You Know Your Place? . . .Values. This resource linked to other sites where they practiced skills. There were listed the process and advice. It was made by Tameka McGhee of Free-Hardeman University. Then Dealing With Devilish Division was the last Web Quest. Here tasks were listed, resources and a game site. This is James Sugg’s Site.

It took a while to locate this information but I believe that it will be useable information for the classroom teacher when planning for modern date Math Literacy using the internet.