Life in Lower School
teaching 3rd grade in a k12 independent school
Learning Math Facts (it’s more fun than flashcards)
I am one of those lucky teachers who also gets to experience life as an elementary school parent. I have been blessed with boy-girl twins who are now in 4th grade and I also have two lovely stepdaughters who are in high school. Lately my 9 year old girl has had some meltdowns over her math homework. Last week she finally broke down and sobbed, “I’m no good at math and I hate 4th grade!” Since she lives and breathes for school each day, I knew that the last part of her statement wasn’t true. I did know, however, that math facts have always been tricky for her even though many other things come easily. So I called her teacher to discuss math.
Her teacher is wonderful, and she assured me that she does quite well in math. I told her that as a “teacher mom” I have given my daughter games, worksheets, and flashcard to work with in the past. Unfortunately she has been quite resistant to my help (not terribly surprising – I mean who wants their “teacher mom” to take a teacher role at home.) I asked her teacher if I could please have something that came from her to give to my daughter. This way it would be an assignment instead of a mom-inflicted event. She suggested three different math fact websites to try. This has been a HUGE sucess, so I thought I would use my blog to share these resources with other parents and teachers to try.
Cyberchallenge
http://www.mathmastery.com/cyberchallenge/
Mathmagician
http://www.oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/Mathmagician/cathymath.html
It’s so much better than flashcards – for my daughter AND for me!
October 26th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
Amy – We had a group form around Autism Spectrum Disorders in our school districts fall PD strands. I have been looking for a good excuse to try using a wiki. As they came to th end of their time together they wanted to keep working on expanding their understanding. They wanted a place to share the resources they were pulling together. I suggested a wiki. I set one up and put in a couple of pages for them to look at and edit. They are nervous, they are sacred, they don’t have a clue what a wiki is. My admin is OK about it, they will give CEU’s as they build it. Some folsk did not want their work to be public so we took teh wiki private last week.
here is another one that I am involved with that some of us are trying to shape into a professional learning community on Web 2.0
https://eastconntechcouncil.wikispaces.com
October 27th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Amy – this in response to your Twitter mesage to me – Great … I’m so glad you found my keynote worthwhile. Wes Fryer told me he hopes to show it to politicos and ed admin people in Oklahoma because they block everything and he wants them to see the possibilities.
Brian