Inspire the Next Generation of Math Leaders
“Every child deserves a champion, an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection, and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.” - Rita Pierson, Every Kid Needs A Champion
Get your copy of Hacking Digital Learning or The 30 Goals Challenge. Ask me about training your teachers, [email protected]!
Math is useful for solving problems and necessary to figure out the world around us. We need our students to be confident in their math skills so they can solve real world problems. My recent keynote, Inspire the Next Generation of Math Leaders, shares 6 ideas for engaging students and boosting their confidence in math so they pursue STEM careers. These are the ideas I cover:
- Tie in real world tangible experiences
- Partner with families
- Connect to other content areas
- Play and have fun
- Introduce them to inspiring figure
- Be their champions
Ideas and Resources
- Useful hashtags to find resources are #Math, #Maths, #STEM, #STEAM, and #MathChat.
- Try these types of instructional methods with English learners: multimedia, visual aids, screencasts, hands-on learning, sensory learning, graphic organizers, realia, flashcards, pair work/group work, storytelling, diagrams, foldables, charts, gifs, experiments, infographics, videos, demonstrations, labeling, games, PBL, mindmapping and sketchnoting.
- Get them to create and solve Emoji word problems!
- Students can visualize data and create infographics. Find a slide presentation and free web tools here.
- Math Science Music has several lesson ideas and interactive resources for a variety of ages that use music to teach math concepts.
- Desmos has several cool interactive and visual lesson ideas and resources for students, like this one about angles, graphing, and basketball.
- Students can create games and learn coding! Try Hopscotch or Scratch MIT.
- Try this Math visual online dictionary for children.
- Try the STEM Hollywood lesson plans, to get learners to use science, math, and technology to investigate a haunting or survive a zombie apocalypse.
- Google Docs and Spreadsheets have great add-ons for math to type equations and solve math problems. Check out my Google resources here!
- Get them sewing. They will follow patterns and take measurements.
- Learn through cooking! Find recipes here. Students can learn math, science and literature while helping feed others by creating cookbooks. I recommend using BookCreator, Issuu, or FlipSnack. Enhance the cookbooks by getting students to include short how to videos, images, or audio clips of interviews explaining the science, history, traditions or origins of the recipe.
- Transform word problems into comics! Check out this blog with examples. Find free comic creators here!
- They can create videos of their word problems to visualize them! Try Explain Everything, Educreations, or Powtoons. See this example by Mrs. Wideen’s first graders using Educreations!
- Students can study the math and physics of the slides, swings, or other playground equipment.
- Students can take what they learn and apply it into building their own playgrounds. They can use Legos.
- Get them to conduct field research with local engineers and contractors.
- Students can measure their shadows at different times of the day. Get them to bring in other objects and draw what they predict the shadows will be depending on the time and location.
- Get them to test different distances and angles with their bodies playing different sports to improve their game!
- Foldables are great for learning. Find examples here!
- The Mathematics Shed is one of my favorite math blogs with such innovative activities for students, such as Star Wars math problems.
- Yummy Math has plenty of real world math problems to solve that are interesting.
- Math is Fun has plenty of activities as well as a visual math dictionary.
Bookmarks
Math, by shellyterrell