Yummy Math                   

Teaching mathematics has always been my favorite subject because I loved being able to relate what we were doing to the real world. In fact, I was greatly inspired by the Cosby Show in the late 80s when the Huxtables put Theo through "The Real World." He had showed signs of entitlement and the Huxtable suddenly became his landlords requiring him to pay rent for his room, to purchase his furnishings and myriad of other needs. Immediately thereafter, I began "The Real World Money System" in my classroom and continued using some form of monetary exchange in every math classroom I had. In my last 8^th grade classroom I implemented the Entrepreneurial Experiment for a full year requiring my students to create their own business, trade on our own stock exchange and present their business plans at the end of the end at TREP parent night. (By the way a TREP is an eTREPreneur who is 19 years old or younger.) On Friday, I shared a great day with one of my favorite people at one of my favorite schools and she shared the best real world math website I has seen in a long time. This "tuesdays" is dedicated to making math real

Yummy Math can turn any routine classroom into a collaborative adventure. My friend showed one of her very traditional math teachers this site and her reaction was grateful, but she basically went on with her normal way of teaching. My friend's persistence made the teacher realize that she wasn't giving up, so in order to appease her she showed the students the site without expectations. Instead, the students embraced it, went into unplanned, very functional group work to solve the problems presented. Not only did it turn her students into engaged learners, they requested it over and over again. Student interest and subsequent student learning transformed her classroom. Yummy Math is a Creative Commons site so share, but give credit to Brian Marks and Leslie Lewis who provide their service free of charge. You can make a $16 a year donation to help the cause! Some of the most recent mathematical challenges were, "How much caffeine?" the California wildfires and a Timeline towards racial equality. Yummy Math was created to provide teachers with an easy way to bring real-life into their math classrooms while inspiring students to do the math, reason, think critically, question and communicate. 

If you don't teach math, you certainly know a math teacher. I would like to highly encourage you to share Yummy Math with them. The site has in-depth challenges in Algebra, Number Sense, Data and Probability and Geometry You can even search the site by genres like: Holidays and Annual Events, Math and Food, Math and Science, Math and Social Studies, Math and Art, Movies and Entertainment and Sports. The grade level ranges are 3^rd - 8^th and a whole section dedicated to high school. Under their Creative Commons License you are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work and to even remix and adapt the problems as long as you do it for non-commercial purposes and give credit to the Yummy Math team. Why not send them $16 a year to encourage them to continue this priceless work? (I wonder how they came up with that amount?)

How do you make mathematics real to the students? Be creative. Seek the advice and ideas of experts like the Yummy Math people. These are some of their favorite resources that help them create Yummy Math challenges:

The Illustrative Math Project gives illustrations of the new CCSS.  Many of the standards have nice, rich, high quality example problems.

Illuminations Math activities that focus on concepts and reasoning, some using technology.  Calculation Nation also resides here: the best math game website on the web.

Khan Academy Tons of helpful little videos on math algorithms and a nice coaching program.

Wolfram Alpha is more than a search engine. It gives you access to the world's facts and data and calculates answers across a range of topics.

Shodor Applications, games, simulations and math tools.

Geogebra is a free web resource that can be used to replace Sketch Pad and a graphing calculator.  Plus your students can use it free from home as well.  Check out Geogebratube for great simulations and apps that have been made for you to use with your class as a demo or discovery tool.

The Teaching Channel has nice videos and lessons on all subjects.  The math lessons look good and tend to focus on concepts and reasoning.

Dan Meyer writes about the use of technology in the math classroom as well as writing and implementing tasks that help students to become patient problem solvers.

Great Maths Teaching Ideas is a math education blog that is full of current math ed news and great teaching ideas for various math concepts.  We believe that William's philosophy matches up with the philosophy of the NCTM and CCSS.  Follow his blog for ideas and resources that you can put to use in your classroom.

Emergentmath A blog about teaching in an engaging and effective manner with a problem based learning focus.

Robert Kaplinsky If you like yummymath you should check out Robert's real world math activities.

DeltaScape Nice blog about math ed and issues relating to teaching and learning.

Kudos to the Yummy Math team. You are an inspiration.

"The formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill."  

Albert Einstein

Creative Commons image from Yummy Math

ipadio   

LiveBinders 

Doceri 

NASA's Image Gallery 

Popplet 

Zoey's Room
Finance in the Classroom
Fotopedia 

The Common Good Forecaster  

Google Earth 

UJAM 

Symbaloo.edu 

Google Science Fair 

Stossel in the Classroom
Word Sift 

Lee Kolbert