Tips on how to engage learners and increase literacy in mathematics in a fun way!
Increase your student's conceptual understanding through increased mathematics literacy and vocabulary.
Here are some fun literacy ideas geared primarily for geometry content based vocabulary, but can be used across all mathematics and STEM content areas.
Remember, if you are bored, the students are bored too!
Tip #1 - Board Game Play
Who doesn't love a good game of BINGO? Especially when there is prizes involved! The BakerBingo website will generate BINGO cards for you, based on the number of students playing, and will also set up your call list all for FREE! The website also provides a platform to play BINGO digitally. If you can’t find exactly what you’re looking for to match lesson goals from the ready-made BINGO cards, bingobaker.com allows you to customize and create your own BINGO cards by dragging and dropping images or typing words into blank card boxes. Best of all, this website is completely free to use!
Take your student's literacy comprehension to the next level. Once the words are familiar an alternative version of BINGO can be played using the same words, only now on the BINGO card is an image representing the meaning of the word. This strategy can assist students in familiarizing, comprehending, and visualizing new vocabulary words across the subject of mathematics. Fun math experiences such as BINGO have the potential to establish learner retention of the mathematical vocabulary words.
Tip #2 - Digital Game Based Learning (DGBL)
This amazing Educational App has the ability to scan and solve your geometry word problems! If that is not enough to entice you, this App will guide you through exploring over 100 geometric shapes, study their properties, visualize and modify shapes in real-time, and even calculate volume, surface area, perimeter, or circumference.
Tip #3 - Create Anticipation
See this sample anticipation guides for a lessons on "point, line, segment, rays" and "congruent triangles." See also the blank template to make and customize your own anticipation guide.
Students begin the lesson activating their prior knowledge by reading statements pertaining to congruent triangles. Students have the opportunity to asses their content knowledge by deciding whether a statement is true (T) or false (F), or if they agree (A), disagree (D) or are not sure (NS).
At the end of the lesson, students have a chance to reflect and assess the accuracy of their statements. They are also prompted to reconsider and explain their reasoning.
Tip #4 - Information, Data, and Media literacy
If you like playing with objects or drawing, then this online learning platform is for you! Students can create images, resize, reshape, and complete tasks such as transformations and translations. This is so helpful when trying to teach students to visualize how shapes move across a plane. And don't you know, this online informational resources is free!
Tip #5 - CalcPlot3D
Are your calculus students struggling to visualize 3D reasoning? What are some of the benefits you've seen learning STEM through interactive applets and 3D-printed manipulatives? Help is on the way for calculus teachers with the CalcPlot3D online tool. Calculate, plot and graphs in 3-D. CalcPlot3D is a free tool that helps users to visualize mathematical objects and relationships in three dimensions. CalcPlot3D works across different digital devices.
Read more: STEM for all
Tip #6 - DESMOS Calculator
Learning the names of common graphs, as well as the vocabulary associated with graphs, can be overwhelming. demos Calculator has a bank of all need-to-know graphs to help students familiarize visualize, familiarize, and retain. For example, take the trigonometry graph showing "period" and "amplitude." DESMOS calculator identifies the vocabulary and demonstrates the vocabulary visually.
Tip #7 - Free TI-84 Plus Emulator
Follow up your instructor-led explicit instruction connecting the lecture to the graphing calculator. When students regularly use the graphing calculator, they make action out of the words they learn. Scroll down at this site and you will find a link that will allow you to download a free TI 84 Plus Calculator to use online. Each of your students could download one. The TI 84 Plus Emulator graphs in color and gives all the different perspectives on the same screen. It would be great to use to teach the Graphical, Numerical, Analytics, and Word perspectives of various functions with the Rational Function being the one that gives so many different discontinuities and really makes the kids think!
Using this online calculator prepares students to take the new digital SAT. Students need to be familiar with this online calculator to be efficient and successful when taking the SAT.
Read more: The School Calculators Program
Tip #8 - GeoGbra
Inquiry-Based Learning in mathematics takes a different approach from the normal math presentation. Resist the urge to spell out every little detail to your students. Instead, lead students through mathematical discovery using GeoGbra. GeoGbra is an online drawing tool. Students can draw geometrical images with ease at they consider where their mathematical journey is taking them today.
Tip #9 - DeltaMath
Are your students struggling with a topic? Is it time to reteach and remediate? Facilitate discussion and small group learning strategies through the digital lessons of DeltaMath. Keep DeltaMath in your back pocket to remediate and reteach mathematical literacy in your classroom. Delta Math is a great website to create individualized assignments for either remediation, acceleration, or just plain mastery.
Tip #10 - Visualize Future Implications with Naviance
Lead and guide your students beyond the high school classroom. Naviance is a college-prep software platform designed to simplify the college application process. Students will visualize and actualize their future in application action. Have students' full of uncertainty about the benefit of college, introduce them to the power of visualization.
Read more: Tips for Preparing your College Application
There's no such thing as boring mathematics!
Reflection
Creating this portfolio of 10 strategies was initially a time-consuming investment. However, the strategies and artifacts I collected can be dynamically used across all subjects in secondary math, as well as other subject content areas under the STEM umbrella such as science. Despite advertising myself as a secondary education math teacher, I have found myself teaching biology and chemistry this year, in addition to geometry. I was recently notified that next school year I will be teaching advanced algebra and pre-calculus. My work experience has led me to believe that high school administrators can often assume math teachers and science teachers are interchangeable. While my personal view is in opposition to this idea, the reality is administrators need to fill vacant positions. I have been grateful for the work, and certainly my knowledge of science gained through my Bachelor of Science in mathematics, has equipped me more than most to be able to teach such science subjects.
The benefit to such a dynamic literacy strategy portfolio is that many of the resources can be interchangeably used between teaching math and science. Most of my artifacts and examples pertain to geometry due to my initial teaching schedule of geometry. Regardless, many of the websites I used for my artifacts have equal resources for all math and science subjects. This is extremely helpful for someone, such as me, filling a teaching role outside of her comfort zone or previous formal training. As I am in no wise a unique or special substitute teaching candidate, I suspect many teachers entering this profession have found themselves in a similar juxtaposition of teaching roles. I see the compilation of my Literacy Strategies Portfolio as such a long-term benefit, I invested in a more permanent website domain that I can quickly and easily access. I anticipate my next twenty years of teaching will include many, if not all mathematics subjects and quite possibly a continued sampling of science subjects.
I should not fail to mention, I have gleamed ideas, strategies, and resources greatly benefiting from other teachers collaborating online. This electronic portfolio of mine and accompanying website, accessible by a Google search engine, is a way to contribute, collaborate, and give back to the online teaching community. It can also easily be used for collaboration amongst my local teaching department and respective teams.
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