 Maria's Math Tips, September 2015 |
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Hello!
Great to "meet" you in terms of a newsletter after the summer... Hope everyone (on the Northern hemisphere anyway) is having a great start with new school year. 
~Maria
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1. Math Mammoth news
A new kid on the block!Math Mammoth Data and Graphs is a worktext that covers common statistical graphs and some related topics for grades 2-5. It is a worktext, which means it includes both the "text" (instruction) and the "work" (exercises and problems). The book starts with the easiest topics: reading and making bar graphs, pictograms, histograms, and various kinds of line graphs. Toward the end of the book, we also study average (also called the mean) and mode, and how these two concepts relate to line and bar graphs. Sample pages (PDF) Contents and Introduction Making Bar Graphs, part 2 Reading Line Graphs Mean, Mode, and Bar Graphs Average Price: $4.20 (PDF download) Buy at Kagi Buy at Currclick Homeschool Buyers Co-op will re-open last month's GROUP BUY for the large Math Mammoth bundles from 9/10 through 9/21. The discount is 50% off! => www.homeschoolbuyersco-op.org/math-mammoth |
2. Lessons on integersHere's a collection of 7 video lessons of mine on the basics of integer arithmetic, meant for pre-algebra or 7th grade math: It contains the following individual video lessons, which you can also access individually:
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3. PEMDASI don't feel there's anything wrong with PEMDAS as such (to teach the order of operations), but this post points out a difficulty many students have: it's kind of hard for them to remember/understand the in "PEMDAS", multiplications and divisions are "on the same level" — multiplications are NOT to be done before all divisions, but from left to right.For example, in 24 / 4 × 2, we do 24/4 first, not 4 × 2. And it works similarly with addition and subtraction (the "AS" part of PEMDAS): In 24 − 4 + 5, we do the subtraction first. 
This blogger suggests an alternative mnemonic - GEMA, which stands for:
Grouping symbols Exponential operations (this includes roots) Multiplicative operations Additive operations Interesting! |
4. World Education Games
WORLD EDUCATION GAMES is a free math competition where you 'race' against other children from around the world, solving simple math facts questions.
If your children or students like such challenges, here's your opportunity! The FREE registration is at: 3plearning.com/worldeducationgames |
5. It's the thought that counts...
I know we're in September and way past 7/22 (an approximation to Pi) but I enjoyed this comic strip anyhow.
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6. How parents give their kids math anxietyThis was an interesting article... I definitely agree that TEACHERS and PARENTS convey their attitudes to the children, sometimes even without realizing it.How Parents Give Their Kids Math Anxiety |
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That's it this time! I hope you found something helpful. Feel free to forward this issue to a friend/colleague! Subscribe here. Till next month, Maria Miller |
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