Math and the Movies

Video clips can be a great way to "hook" student attention at the beginning of a lesson.  Here are a few websites with video clips from television shows or movies that involve math, lesson ideas, and lists of movies with math scenes. 

• Mathematics in Movies is a collection of movie clips with math-related content.  It is created by Oliver Knill from the Department of Mathematics at Harvard University.  Movie clips can be viewed using Flash player (.swf) files or Quicktime. 
• Math and the Movies Resource List includes information about different movie scenes that pertain to mathematics.  A brief synopsis of the story line, a description of the math problem/concept, and a related lesson or worksheet.
• Simpsons Math has text transcripts of math-related scenes from television episodes, images from the show, and classroom activity sheets.
• Mathematical Fiction is a list of books, plays movies, and television shows that involve math concepts.  Users can browse the list by media type, genre, topic, title, or year. 

MegaPenny Project

The MegaPenny Project helps students visualize large numbers using pennies.  The site shows different amounts of pennies from a single penny up to a quintillion pennies.  Users can see the value of the pennies, size of the pile, weight, and area.

Math Slice

On the Math Slice website users can play math games and puzzles like Math Tree (factor trees), Drive Thru (decimal addition/consumer application problems), and Math Wheel (math terms).  Users can also create custom math worksheets on topics such as money, rounding, scientific notation, solving equations, and fractions.

Virtual Math Manipulatives

The use of manipulatives, virtual or concrete, can help students build a better understanding of math concepts.  Manipulatives also help students represent about abstract concepts in a concrete way. Teachers then help students to connect these new concepts to their background knowlege.  Some of the advantages of using virtual manipulatives over concrete manipulatives include unlimited numbers or sets of manipulatives and customization.  What are Virtual Manipulatives? by Patricia Moyer, Johnna Bolyard, and Mark Spikell discusses different types of virtual manipulatives, classroom applications, and information about evaluation of virtual manipulative sites.  Learning Mathematics with Virtual Manipulatives also has information about how to use virtual manipulatives in the classroom, efficacy of manipulatives, and information about choosing appropriate manipulatives for teaching a concept.

A few sites with virtual math manipulatives are listed below:

• National Library of Virtual Manipulatives
• The NLVM was created at Utah State Universtiy with funding from the National Science foundation.  Users can search for activities by concept or by grade.  Each virtual manipulative has instructions and information for parents and teachers.
• eNLVM
• NCTM Illuminations
• This resource site by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics includes 105 online activivties, over 500 lessons, and links to other resources on the web.
• Math Playground
• Shodor Interactivate Activities
• Users can find tools, activities, discussions, and lessons for different math concepts on this website. Activities on this site include Area Explorer, Tessellate!, Adjustable Spinner, Box Plot, and Linear Function Machine.
• NEIRTEC Online Math Tools
• Math Resources - Virtual Manipulatives
• Visual Fractions
• Models of fractions using circles and number lines.  There are also links to other games and resources for learning how to simplify, add, and subtract fractions.
• Glencoe Virtual Manipulatives
• Manipulatives on this site include algebra tiles, attribute blocks, base ten blocks, color tiles, two-color counters, spinners, geoboards, and a bucket balance.
• Arcytech Educational Java Programs
• This site includes several java applets for a variety of math concepts including
• Math Tools
• This site is part of the Math Forum @ Drexel and has a variety of web resources for teaching math.  Users can search the catalog to find resources including tools, lesson plans, stories, and activities.
• BBC Schools
• Primary Numeracy Games and Activities
• Secondary Math Games, Activities, Tests
• Hand Made Manipulatives
• Although these are not virtual manipulatives, the printable manipulatives on Dr. Margo Lynn Mankus' site work well and allow all students to have their own set of manipulatives to use.

Dynamic Paper

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Illuminations website has numerous lesson ideas and activities.  One of the tools on the Illuminations website is Dynamic Paper.  This tool can be used to create handouts for use in your classroom.  You can create customized handouts with number lines, nets of three-dimensional shapes, pattern blocks, spinners, graph paper, tessellations, number grids and more.  There are several different options for each.  After creating your handouts, they can be downloaded as JPEG or PDF files.

Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging service that allows people to share information in short text messages called "tweets."  Posts are limited to 140 characters.  Typically tweets describe what people are doing, thinking, or working on.  However, tweets can be responses to tweets or questions for others to respond to.

Here are some ideas for using Twitter in the classroom:

Twitteracy in the Classroom

Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom

My class creates tweets to review concepts we have learned or to wrap-up a lesson.  Students create tweets to tell the most important information in a lesson.  It is a good way to discuss summarizing.  Our latest tweets can be found on the right-hand side of this page.

Ideas to Inspire

Ideas to Inspire



This site has many presentations with ideas for lessons including uses for web tools such as Wordle, Twitter, and GoogleEarth. There are also lesson ideas for different curricular areas including math, science, writing, music, and geography.