Success Stories from NCTM NOLA 2014

I just returned from attending the vibrant NCTM Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. This conference was well attended with over 7,000 attendees and more than 160 exhibitors. Mathematics teachers, coaches, supervisors, school administrators, collegiate faculty, and curriculum developers flock from around the country and many from Canada, to learn about the needs of PreK-12 mathematics education.

I spent most of my time in the Exhibitor Hall working the booth for SI Manufacturing who are the creators many popular classroom manipulatives. In particular, I was providing classroom ready demonstrations of Deci-Blocks®, a companion manipulative to Pattern Blocks. There is often a misconception about manipulatives being used only in elementary and middle school classrooms. However, high school students can benefit from the tactile and visual representations manipulatives such as Deci-Blocks® can provide when used for modeling and solving problems in Algebra, Geometry, Statistics and Probability. For more information about Deci-Blocks® and the book entitled, “Explorations with Deci-Blocks®: High School Activities Supporting the Common Core Standards,” by Christina Gawlik and Barbara Martinez-Romero, go to www.si-manufacturing.com.

I met several educators who developed products for teachers. Felix Nagy-Lup is a high school teacher in North Carolina. He developed three textbooks with rich problems that support the high school Common Core Mathematics standards. And he partnered with MathsTab to include an app companion to his materials. I was very impressed with his application as students can access all problems from the texts within the app, and annotate their algebraic work right on the screen. This feature allows teachers to see student work in real-time, or review it at a later date. For more information about “Successful Mathematics Common Core Math 1, 2, 3 Complete Collection” and MathsTab, go to www.successfulmathematics.com and www.mathstab.com.

For educators looking for elementary and middle school mathematics content that is adaptive and engaging, look into wootmath.com. Woot Math allows student to conceptually develop concepts using digital manipulatives such as fraction circles, fraction bars, number lines and array models. The teacher dashboard allows teachers to know when students are struggling with concepts and the amount of time students spend on interactive tasks. Woot Math is also available on various tablets. If you are in the market to browse the most popular classroom resources and manipulatives, consider Nasco, Spectrum, and EAI Education as your designated educational dealers at eNasco.com, education.spectrum-nasco.ca and www.EAIeducaiton.com.

#math #mathactivities #mathematicseducation #patternblocks #technology #deciblocks #teaching #k12