Repetitio est mater studiorum.

Or to say it another way, repetition is the mother of learning.

And while repetition sometimes gets a bad rap (as in “drill and kill”), properly utilized, repetition can help cement foundational concepts and allow students to advance to more deeper and nuanced forms of learning.

The learning platform I Know It provides a wide range of activities and exercises for K-5 math and English language arts practice, as well as progress reports for educators and parents and gamified feedback for students.

What is I Know It?

I Know It is a math and English language arts practice site that provides extensive, individualized exercises for students in grades K-5.

The platform includes some of the most engaging features of gamification, such as congratulatory graphics and animations, sound effects, awards, and badges. I think it strikes an excellent balance between fully gamified interactives on one hand and dry data-driven instruction on the other.

I Know It goes beyond simple practice modules by aligning the majority of its exercises with Common Core Standards or selected state standards. Plus, its student-friendly features will encourage timely assignment completion as well as exploration of additional, unassigned problem sets.

How Does I Know It Work?

I Know It makes it easy for educators to sign up for its generous free trial. Simply provide your name, school name, phone number, and email and you’re ready to explore the site. Once signed in, teachers can set options for the following parameters:

• Standards (Common Core, Texas or Florida)
• Hints (none, three or unlimited)
• Animations (on/off)
• Students may explore on their own (yes/no)
• Questions may be read aloud (on/off)
• Progress report to parents via email (yes/no)

Given the level of control and optimization provided, I Know It has a remarkably clean interface with intuitive navigation. It’s also very easy to edit any of these parameters at any time later.

CREATING A CLASS

Create and name your class from the My Students tab. The easiest way to populate your online classes is to use the Rapid Roster feature, which accepts text input, or copy-and-pasted names from a text file, spreadsheet, or email. The system will then create the user names and passwords for you. These can be edited later if you wish. You can also print out a PDF with all student names and passwords.

GETTING TO KNOW THE EXERCISES

I Know It offers two categories of practice: math and English language arts. To start exploring practice sets, select a category and grade from the top menu or from the teacher dashboard. Now you’ll see the entire range of problems for that grade, with large bold print headings so you can easily find your preferred activities.

To get a quick view of a problem type, mouse over the description and an example will pop up. To try it yourself, click to open the problem. Your view will be identical to the student’s view, so you can see what happens following a correct answer or an incorrect answer.

Note the animation option toggle in the lower right corner. Students who prefer not to have graphic or animated feedback can adjust their own settings.

If you’d like to experience and test the platform exactly as a student would, sign in as a student in a separate browser. First add a student; e.g.; Test Student. Open a new browser (for example, use Edge if your teacher account is open in Chrome) and sign in as Test Student, logging in with user name, the class code and the password. A separate student email is not required.

ASSIGNING EXERCISES

To assign activities from the teacher dashboard, select grade and subject (math or ELA), then select the desired exercise. The Assign Lesson window gives you multiple options for the assignment, including number of questions (1-80), which students to assign, display options, auto reassign, and several others.

What Are the Best I Know It Features?

LESSON DIFFERENTIATION

One of most useful features built into the I Know It platform is the ease with which teachers can differentiate lessons. This can be accomplished in two ways:

1. Assigning a lesson of a lower or higher grade level to individual students.
   Instead of assigning fourth grade math sets to Jane Doe, you can assign second grade problem sets, since she's currently working at that level. You can then quickly assign grade-level work to the rest of the students if desired. Importantly, there will not be a grade level displayed on assignments.
   
2. Setting the "ability level" to a lower or higher grade.
   The "ability level" is an optional feature that, if set, will guide the level of exploration exercises offered to a student. These are the optional activities displayed underneath the student's assigned work.

PROGRESS TRACKING AND REPORTING

Student progress tracking allows teachers to see overviews of a class or student, or drill down into details if desired. "Recent Activity" lists students, lessons worked on, and scores, with a link to a detailed view for each student. Here teachers can view all of a student's questions and answers as well as time spent on tasks.

Teachers may also export a printable PDF progress report for selected intervals, or view awards won by students for completing lessons. Weekly progress reports will be emailed to parents if enabled in Settings.

BUILT-IN ACCESSIBILITY TOOLS

Each activity window sports a sound icon in the top left corner, allowing questions to be read aloud. Incorrect answers yield explanations clarifying the correct answer and offering the chance to view the question and answer again.

Does The Robot Have A Name And Why Is It So Much Fun?

Maybe it's just the fifth grader in me, but I love the animated robot character that responds to answers (if animations are permitted in settings). The variety of playful animations for correct answers—all with apt and amusing sound effects—include: blowing bubbles; barking dogs; flying birds; rain; rainbows; rocket ship taking off, circling the moon, parachuting back to Earth; juggling; a flower garden springing from the head; eating an apple that turns into a pie; and more.

My guess is that most kids will enjoy these animated rewards and hopefully, be more motivated to complete their work. Sadly, the riveting (and no doubt, riveted) robot is nameless.

How Much Does I Know It Cost?

I Know It offers three account types: Family, Single Teacher and School/District, with varying pricing and features. A 30-day free trial, with no credit card required, makes it straightforward to discover if the platform is right for your class.

The Family membership allows one parent and up to four children, using a single login, for $45 annually.

The Single Teacher account includes one teacher and 25 students (each of whom has an individual login) for $150 annually and the option to add additional student licenses at $7.50 each.

The District/School account provides additional benefits, such as a unlimited teacher accounts, a dedicated account manager, teacher training, phone tech support and others. The cost is per student and varies depending on the size of the school or district.

Buzzmath is, as the name suggests, creating a real buzz around the subject of math for young students. The idea is to bridge that gap between students who thrive on problem-solving, naturally, and those that struggle to grasp the sometimes abstract ideas.

By offering live feedback and gamified math interactions, Buzzmath works to help bring all students into a fun and engaging digital environment for learning.

Aimed at students from ages 6 to 16, this inclusive learning platform offers curriculum-aligned content that's made fun through the gamified process. They are allowed to explore at their pace, crucially, so they can feel in control while also giving teachers useful insights into their learning.

This guide aims to lay out all you need to know about how Buzzmath could work for your class.

What is Buzzmath?

Buzzmath is a digital math practice platform that offers gamified tasks as a way to help students gain mastery in math.

The platform offers more than 14,000 math-based questions for students to tackle. This is very much useful as a tool to complement teaching, rather than to teach directly. Educators can assign activities, for example, as a way to reinforce learning after something new has been taught.

While teachers can tailor learning to individuals or groups, in either case there is storytelling and gamification involved with missions, rewards, and challenges to keep students motivated.

Teachers can use this to have students practice curriculum-aligned skills and see progress to then better tailor future sessions as needed.

Since Buzzmath is web-based, it should be easy to access across devices and internet connections -- both in school and at home.

How does Buzzmath work?

Buzzmath can be used freely, by students exploring the activities at their own pace. Or it can be utilized to assign tasks to students or groups specifically.

Students answer questions and are immediately given feedback with answers marked as correct or incorrect. In the latter case, guidance can be triggered to help them grow through productive failure.

Students can retry questions as needed and access hints or examples to help them progress. Teachers are then able to monitor progress using a detailed reporting dashboard. This can help to spot learning gaps from data such as time spent on task, attempts made, and overall accuracy.

Accessibility features include audio narration and visual glossaries to help students with varied learning needs get the most out of this service.

What are the best Buzzmath features?

While there are a huge selection of questions on the platform, thanks to dynamic variables, students are able to practice without the problem of repetition fatigue holding them back.

The real-time feedback and ability to retry allows students to feel supported while working at their own pace. This also equates to direct support that allows for independent working without teacher time being required. That should also lead to deeper levels of learning rather than surface-level answering.

Since teachers are able to personalize learning to suit individuals or groups, this can work as a very specific tailored learning support system.

Educators have access to a powerful dashboard that allows them to monitor student progress. Data such as time spent on tasks, attempts made, completion rates, and concept-level performance, can all help teachers define future learning requirements.

The gamification of everything -- with stars, badges, and missions -- can really help to keep students engaged and come back for more practice, naturally.

How much does Buzzmath cost?

Buzzmath varies in pricing based on usage. A limited 30-day free trial is available for teachers who want to give this a go before committing to any particular plan. The plans break down like this:

Schools and districts: Typically licensed per student, with pricing starting around $1 per student annually (minimum spend applies).

Families: Around $20 per month or $120 per year for home use.

Custom quotes are often required for institutional use, particularly outside the US.

Buzzmath best tips and tricks

Start with diagnostic assignments
Use early tasks to identify gaps before tailoring future work.

Use retries as learning moments
Encourage students to reflect on mistakes rather than rush through answers.

Assign differentiated pathways
Target individuals or groups with specific activities to support mixed-ability classes.

I recently wrote an article about the gamified STEM teaching and learning platform Brilliant. While Brilliant is indeed a top performer, it's not the only math "game" in town. I decided to round up a selection of similar online math platforms to help teachers find the perfect match for their students.

For this review, I focused on math or STEM platforms that provide a robust set of online practice tools and manipulatives. Platforms that relied primarily on printed materials were excluded, as I wanted to focus on the learning and engagement benefits of digital manipulatives.

These exceptional math learning tools are fully free or modestly priced, and aimed at engaging learners of all levels with their interactive tools, gamified features, graphics and sound effects. Simply put, they make learning and doing math fun. And because teachers have the ability to individually assign lessons, each platform serves as a personalized learning tool for every student.

Best Online Math Platforms for Education

BEST FOR K-8 MATH CURRICULA

ZEARN

Zearn, a nonprofit platform designed by teachers, provides more than 1,000 research-backed K-8 digital math lessons, and has earned the highest designation (Strong) rating from Evidence for ESSA. Individual teachers can sign up for a full suite of content at no charge, while schools and districts can pay for premium features. A teacher's account includes all Zearn math instructional materials, for up to 35 students and one teacher.

Unique among the platforms featured, Zearn provides brief video introductions that demonstrate how to solve problems in upcoming lessons. In addition to the interactive video lessons, it also provides fluency practice activities and mastery-based quizzes.

Zearn is also distinguished by its level of reporting. Using the four types of reports— Pace, Progress, Tower Alerts, and Sprint Alerts—teachers can easily monitor student progress and pace of lesson completion. Importantly, the two "Alerts" allow teachers to identify students who are struggling with content and fluency.

BEST FOR TARGETED SKILLS PRACTICE

Struggly

Struggly is a preK-8 gamified math supplement that emphasizes the value of persisting through mistakes. Instead of a sad buzzer sound with an error message, kids are congratulated for their mistakes. By acknowledging that mistakes are foundational to learning and brain growth, Struggly takes some of the pressure off both high-achieving and low-achieving students.

Consistent with Struggly's teaching philosophy, no instructions are provided for its engaging exercises. Instead, high-quality animations, pop-ups, and sound effects guide students on where to click on each page. Users can click on "hints" to get help if needed.

Struggly makes it easy for teachers to try its interactive tasks before assigning any. Currently, there are 68 separate tasks available, searchable by Common Core State Standards or topic. Although 68 is relatively few, each task includes a number of levels, so a single task can serve as deep practice across multiple grades. Struggly aims to release one to three new tasks per month.

Although Struggly is a modestly-priced paid platform, it offers a generous 60-day free trial—with no credit card required—to determine if it will be a fit for your classroom.

I Know It

I Know It shines as an easy-to-use K-5 interactive math practice site. Its clean, uncluttered interface offers intuitive navigation for teachers and students alike.

To find lessons, simply select Math from the top menu, then click on your desired grade from K-5, also on the top menu. Teachers can easily try each lesson simply by clicking on it, and also directly assign any lesson from within it. Creating classes and adding students is similarly frictionless.

While it's a fully interactive platform, I Know It's lessons aren't gamified at the same level as other platforms featured here. However, its amusing robot mascot does provide encouragement via sound effects and comic reactions to answers, right or wrong. Hints and encouragement are offered along the way as kids work through their problem sets.

Annual memberships, costing a modest $150, include up to 25 students, while the 30-day free trial (no credit cared required) will allow educators to fully experience the platform's tools and benefits.

BEST DYNAMIC TOOLS AND VIRTUAL MANIPULATIVES

GeoGebra

A fully free interactive math platform for grades 4-12, GeoGebra focuses on dynamic tools that help students visualize and understand concepts in algebra, geometry, numeracy, statistics, and more.

GeoGebra boasts an impressive library of more than one million math learning resources, including lessons, exercises, digital books, and interactives, contributed by the GeoGebra Content Team, as well as GeoGebra’s global community. Users can create and upload their own resources incorporating applets, text, video, images, PDFs, notes, questions, and more.

GeoGebra's intuitive website is easy to navigate and use. It's ideal for exploration, demonstration and formative assessments. Given the platform's extensive scope, educators should familiarize themselves with the interactives and curate relevant resources prior to classroom implementation. Fortunately, GeoGebra offers strong guidance via its Help pages and YouTube channel.

Although an account is not required for either students or teachers, teachers will need to create one in order to fully utilize this versatile and engaging platform.

Polypad

The fully free award-winning Polypad is a digital math playground that uses multimedia interactive tools, sound, and music to teach geometry, algebra, probability, and statistics to middle and high school students. Requiring no login or installation, Polypad runs on all devices and browsers, and provides an extensive set of pre-designed puzzles, activities, and lesson plans.

Available in English and Spanish, Polypad allows users to add co-teachers to their classes and offers detailed student progress reports. The recently added Snapshot Tool makes it easy for educators to select and sequence student work for class discussion.

Polypad also distinguishes itself with logic-based games, such as chess and dominoes, as well as interactive music tools that let users explore and compose music digitally. Open to teachers and students, the Polypad Art and Music Contest is an excellent opportunity to showcase creativity and skill in using the Polypad tools. These unique features of Polypad qualify it as not only a top-notch STEM tool, but also a first-rate STEAM tool.

BEST FOR ENRICHMENT

Brilliant

Brilliant features super snappy graphics and sound effects that mimic those of your students' favorite video games.

But Brilliant is much more than amusing characters, badges, points, and sound effects. In fact, it offers a huge variety of grade 3-12 STEM lessons in math, computer science, science, and data. Each lesson contains multiple levels, progressing from simpler to more complex, allowing students to build mastery and confidence as they work.

Ideal for highly motivated and advanced students, Brilliant allows users to jump ahead in lessons, preventing boredom for quick learners and encouraging them to explore STEM topics on their own.

Premium Brilliant is 100% free for qualified educators and their students.

Brilliant is a gamified online and app-based STEM teaching and learning platform that offers highly interactive lessons with step-by-step problem solving, dynamic visualizations, and brief explanations designed to keep learners engaged.

Brilliant’s slogan, “Everyone is a Math Person,” suggests its appeal to learners of every aptitude, and conveys its aim to reduce math anxiety and foster students' self-motivation.

The platform not only appeals strongly to students, but also to educators, as full premium memberships are available free to qualified educators.

What is Brilliant?

Founded in 2012, Brilliant comprises a STEM learning website plus Android and iOS apps. It partners with the nonprofit Mathcounts Foundation to support math education for middle school students and is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges as supplementary education in math, science and technology.

Brilliant’s STEM games and puzzles are highly visual, interactive and engaging, while providing immediate feedback as students progress through problem sets and lessons. Its gamified interface uses clever sound effects and top-notch animations to reward and encourage persistence and concept mastery.

Aimed at students in grades 3-12, Brilliant offers thousands of lessons in the topics of math, computer science, science and data.

How Does Brilliant Work?

To apply for a free premium education account and start teaching with Brilliant, sign up at educator.brillaint.org. You will then be prompted to create two accounts - an educator account and a student account. The student account is required in order to explore and test the interactive courses and lessons, and view the site from a student perspective.

The next step is to create classes and invite students. This can be done easily via an invitation link or by syncing with Google Classroom. In this way, student accounts will automatically be created as premium accounts, free of charge. Note that educators log in at educator.brilliant.org, while students log in at brilliant.org.

Finding and Assigning lessons
Brilliant’s well-designed lessons dashboard makes it easy to find lessons for your students. First select the desired subject tab, then search by topic, grade, or standard. From the results page, teachers can copy the lesson link, post directly to Google Classroom, or preview the lesson before assigning. To complete the lesson as a student would, you’ll need to use your Brilliant student login that you created earlier. The platform will prompt you to do so.

Student Progress
While Brilliant is not an assessment platform, it does provide progress notes on students by reporting on the number of lessons each student completes and time spent on each lesson. The Highlights dashboard offers an overview of the class performance, including the total number of lessons completed and time spent, as well as listing students ranked by lessons completed. These reports, while not granular, do provide a general sense of the progress gained by individual students and the class as a whole.

What Are The Best Brilliant Features?

Brilliant’s clean interface, sophisticated graphics, and sound effects yield a fun and fluid interactive experience, allowing students to learn by doing. Gamified features such as streaks, points, and battery charges boost engagement and provide small rewards on the way to topic mastery.

Lesson Abundance and Variety
The sheer variety and abundance of STEM lessons in math, computer science, science, and data is remarkable. Within each lesson, levels progress from simpler to more complex, offering multiple exercises to reinforce learning in different ways. Suggested grade levels give teachers the ability to carefully curate lessons based on student grade and achievement. Since lessons can be separately assigned, teachers are able to individualize instruction according to student skill level.

Self-directed learning
Brilliant is an excellent platform for self-directed learning, as it allows students to follow their STEM curiosity without worrying about grades. The ability to jump ahead in lessons will be especially appreciated by advanced students who need less practice time to gain mastery.

Enrichment
Brilliant is ideal for highly motivated and advanced students. Instead of feeling bored and restless when they finish their lessons ahead of their classmates, they can move ahead to the next related lesson or simply "jump ahead" to a topic that intrigues them. At the same time, with its scaffolded lessons and the opportunity to repeatedly practice a single concept, it's also a great tool for struggling students.

Is Brilliant Safe for Kids?

Brilliant does not share, sell, or disclose any personal information of students, nor does it use student information for marketing or other non-educational purposes.

Additionally, the website states that Brilliant for Educators is designed in compliance with global privacy laws, including COPPA, FERPA, and GDPR.

How Much Does Brilliant Cost?

Thanks to a grant-funded program, Brilliant Premium is 100% free for qualified educators. Just as important, students of qualified educators are also qualified for a free premium account.

Eligible educators include the following:

• Elementary, middle, and high school teachers at accredited K-12 schools.
• Principals, superintendents, and other administrators at accredited K-12 schools or districts.
• Camp instructors, club leaders, or nonprofit employees working directly with children for educational purposes.

For general users, Brilliant operates on a freemium model, with basic features such as daily lessons available to free users. Premium users can take advantage of unlimited learning in an ad-free environment, personalized practice, and the ability to jump ahead in courses.

Equatio is an arguably revolutionary technological tool that brings math and science into the digital age.

For years there has been a lag as the typing of equations has been awkward and graph sharing inconsistent, leaving the jump to digital less well-covered for science over arts.

Equatio changes that by offering a more inclusive and optimal way of working with math and science equations digitally.

Developed by TextHelp, this tool lets users type naturally, handwrite on a touchscreen, or even speak equations aloud, in order to enter these digitally.

For teachers this is a great way to lessen the workload for assessments, worksheets, and more. And it offers consistency across devices.

This guide aims to lay out all you need to know about how Equatio could work in your class.

What is Equatio?

Equatio is an equation editor that allows math and science work to be created, edited, and shared digitally with ease.

One of the main selling points of this tool is that it offers a level playing field for all students by providing the tools they need to access equations though different methods.

These access points include handwriting math, speaking it, or visualizing it by converting from existing worksheets.

From students with special educational needs to EAL students, this platform aims to give independence to everyone who wants to engage with STEM learning. It even works in exam situations to ensure everyone can get access as they need.

This tools helps students and teachers communicate digitally through the use of formulas, graphs, equations, and visual explanations.

That works across a host of platforms and devices including Windows, macOS, Chrome, iOS, and online environments.

How does Equatio work?

Equatio works both as a stand alone app and a toolbar that can run overlaying other tools such as Google Docs, Word, Chrome browsers, and more.

This allows you to input in various ways that include typing, handwriting, speech, screenshot import, LaTeX input, or selection from symbol palettes.

Usefully, there is a predictive math engine that allows you to type naturally and it will help complete the rest to save time, if possible. For example, typing “sqrt” produces a radical symbol, and typing “2^3” automatically converts into an exponent.

This reduces the need for multistep formatting and allows students to focus on mathematical thinking rather than notation mechanics.

This applies to handwriting and speech inputs as well, as the system does the conversion for the user to make it as easy and quick as possible.

Teachers can setup multi-step problems, interactive tasks, or diagrams within the Mathspace digital STEM workspace environment. This lets students annotate, draw, rearrange, and show working clearly.

What are the best Equatio features?

Equatio features a really helpful Screenshot Reader tool that acts as a way to bridge the physical and digital worlds.

This allows teachers to capture images of printed worksheets, textbook pages, exam questions, or online graphics to have these converted into a digital example. The system will extract the mathematical notation and leave that available in an editable form.

The Mathspace, a virtual whiteboard of sorts, is ideal for problem-solving, modeling, or showing work. Teachers can create interactive worksheets, scaffold steps, or build manipulatives that students can rearrange.

Desmos graphing is fully supported so functions can be plotted, manipulated, and embedded into assignments. Students can quickly test ideas, explore behavior, and analyze relationships.

Equatio goes beyond algebra for math. Chemistry formulas, atomic structures, physics notation, and scientific operators are all supported, making it a full STEM tool.

The tool has a host of accessibility functions. Equatio supports learners with dysgraphia, processing difficulties, motor impairments, and more. It also integrates exam-access features for approved candidates.

How much does Equatio cost?

Equatio is available through a combination of individual subscriptions, institutional licenses, and pilots. While pricing can vary by region and deployment, the broad structure is:

A 30-day free trial for individuals, or a 90-day pilot for schools and districts wanting to test the tool with multiple users, is available.

The Individual license options, starting at $170/year, offer paid annual plans for single users.

The School or district licensing options off site-wide deployments with volume-based pricing, central management tools, and broad access for staff and students.

Pricing for a K-12 Group is $17/student/year, or for a K-12 District is $2.05/student/year.

Equatio best tips and tricks

Use Mathspace for modelling
Build worked examples in which each layer appears gradually. This helps students follow reasoning rather than just seeing final answers.

Create reusable templates
Set up equation frameworks, graphing tasks, unit-conversion grids, or chemistry balancing worksheets once, then duplicate each year.

Combine handwriting and typing
Encourage students to start by handwriting intuitively, then convert to typed notation to check for accuracy. It builds muscle memory and symbolic fluency together.

Watch the video above or listen/download the audio below.

Alabama has achieved what many thought impossible: climbing from dead last to the middle of the pack in national math rankings. The state, which historically jockeyed with Mississippi for 52nd place on NAEP assessments, now ranks 32nd — a dramatic improvement driven in part by the Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative (AMSTI).

"We are in the middle of the pack," says Rachel Broadhead, who works with the statewide initiative. "That's a big deal for a state that's been at the bottom for as long as anyone can remember."

AMSTI operates on what Rachel describes as a "three-legged stool" approach: professional learning opportunities, physical resources, and job-embedded on-site support. The initiative benefits from regional hubs that place staff closer to classrooms than most statewide programs can achieve.

AMSTI recently extended its partnership with BW Walch to continue scaling the implementation of the Ongoing Assessment Project (OGAP) professional learning program statewide.

Through AMSTI, thousands of Alabama teachers have already been trained in OGAP’s systematic, research-based frameworks—helping them identify student misconceptions early and respond with targeted instruction.

“This partnership with AMSTI has demonstrated what’s possible when teachers are empowered with evidence-based professional learning that deepens their understanding of how students learn math,” said Al Noyes, CEO of BW Walch. “OGAP enables educators to look beyond right or wrong answers—to see inside students’ reasoning, address misconceptions, and help every learner build lasting mathematical understanding.”

The multi-year extension will expand professional learning opportunities, deepen district-level support, and introduce new online tools to strengthen ongoing coaching and collaboration.

This snippet of the conversation features advice to district administrators about making time for PD.

• Tech & Learning Conversations with Kevin Hogan

Achievement in math doesn't happen without motivation—and the most successful districts know how to combine the two.

During this recent webinar, hosted by Christine Weiser, Tech & Learning Content Director, and featuring Cassandra Haines-Riiska, Educator Success Specialist for Prodigy Education and Edward Courtney, an elementary teacher for Long Beach Public Schools in New York, as well as content from Lisa Marceau, Director of Curriculum and Instruction for North Adams Schools in Massachusetts (who could not attend), attendees heard real-world examples of how creating fun, engaging math experiences drives student persistence, improves outcomes, and helps close achievement gaps.

Whether your district is looking to accelerate learning, improve equity, or simply help students enjoy math again, the discussion provided practical, research-informed approaches to explore how math plus motivation adds up to lasting achievement for every student.

As Marceau shared by proxy, “The struggle IS the learning.”

WATCH ON DEMAND HERE

The Indispensable Link: Motivation Fuels Achievement

A central theme of the webinar was that math achievement is inextricably tied to student motivation. The most successful districts understand this connection and actively work to combine the two.

“Motivation comes in so many different shapes and colors,” said Courtney, emphasizing the importance of finding joy in learning, meeting students where they are, and celebrating every success, no matter how small. He noted that shifting negative feelings into positive ones can instantly change a student's day and motivate them to persist.

When students are curious, challenged, or seeking recognition, they are more likely to push through difficulties. Intrinsic motivation, the desire to learn for learning's sake, leads to deeper engagement, long-term achievement, and eventually mastery. Motivated learners view mistakes as opportunities for growth rather than failures, fostering a resilient mindset.

Engagement, particularly through interactive and game-based platforms such as Prodigy, builds momentum by making learning feel like progress and enjoyment. This leads to more frequent practice, greater focus, and boosts both academic and social skills. Ultimately, motivation leads to measurable performance gains, with research consistently showing that motivated students often outperform or catch up to their peers, even those with different starting proficiencies.

Cultivating Math Motivation: Strategies from the Field

Lisa Marceau's experience further illustrated the power of motivation. Faced with students lacking the drive to tackle challenging math problems, her mission was to reframe math as a "superpower" fueled by curiosity and motivation. Her district aimed to instill ownership over learning, observing that motivated students put more effort into difficult problems, engaged in math discourse, and collaborated more with classmates. Incorporating digital games was key to fostering deeper, interactive learning and demonstrating that math can be fun, leading to improved achievement and scores.

Key tips for fueling persistence include:

• Encouraging a Growth Mindset: Teaching students to believe in their ability to grow builds confidence and persistence.
• Embracing Productive Struggle: Helping students understand that struggle is an integral part of learning deepens conceptual understanding.
• Providing Support: Teachers and coaches must provide clear guidance on where and how students can seek help, building a supportive culture.
• Connecting Math to Real Life: Demonstrating the real-world relevance of math helps students see its necessity for achieving their goals.

Success Stories: From Individuals to Districts

“There's no victory that's too small of a victory,” said Courtney. “Even just one problem correct will really make a difference and it will really stand out with the student. It could make or break their entire day." He shared how a second-grader struggling with basic math facts who, through daily engagement with Prodigy and targeted assignments, improved her fluency by 20% in six weeks. This demonstrated the impact of consistent practice and the platform's built-in rewards.

At the classroom level, Courtney observed improved peer collaboration and increased attendance across grades K-5 when motivation-based learning tools were integrated. Teachers reported increased engagement and participation, with one fourth-grade class seeing participation jump from 60% to 100%. Courtney's personal journey from a "terrible math student" to someone who now loves teaching it underscores the transformative power of making math fun, engaging, and accessible.

On a school and district level, Edward's school in Long Beach, New York, implemented Prodigy during a period of budget constraints and potential closure. The students' motivation to keep their school open, fueled by the Prodigy State Challenge, led them to become state champions multiple times over. This collective goal fostered a strong sense of community and celebrated learning milestones, creating a positive school culture that continues to thrive.

Lisa Marceau's district also saw remarkable success, with 95% of their K-6 staff attending Prodigy training, including non-math teachers. This "top-down" approach ensured a common language and district-wide support for the initiative. Her school became the Massachusetts champion for the heroic tier, answering nearly 30,000 questions in a single month.

Scaling Proven Practices

Scaling these practices involves:

• Building a Culture of Growth: Encouraging a growth mindset and celebrating progress school-wide.
• Integrating into Curriculum: Embedding math games and competitions directly into lessons, rather than treating them as "extras."
• Monitoring and Sharing Data: Tracking student engagement alongside achievement and sharing results with students to foster motivation.
• Quality Professional Development: Providing hands-on workshops, peer collaboration opportunities, and tech training for staff, with continuous support.
• High Expectations and Useful Resources: Setting high expectations for all students and staff, and providing the resources they need to succeed.

By prioritizing motivation, celebrating effort, providing targeted support, and leveraging engaging tools such as Prodigy, educators can transform math learning into a joyful and achievable experience for every student.

Struggly is a gamified online math supplement that encourages and rewards student persistence, creativity, and strategy in solving digital math puzzles.

Aimed at students in grades preK-8, Struggly’s games are standards-aligned and allow students to explore and learn diverse math subjects, from arithmetic and fractions to algebraic thinking and reasoning, all through playful, engrossing gameplay.

Struggly’s clean interface, fun graphics, sound effects, and badges add to its appeal for both students and teachers.

What is Struggly?

Struggly is an award-winning digital math supplement that challenges young learners to engage with math topics via its online gamified platform.

While there are many platforms offering math games, Struggly’s emphasis on the value of playful struggle sets it apart from others. Its uncluttered, easy-to-use website features stylish and fun cartoon characters, graphics, and sounds.

“Struggly is all about supporting students to embrace struggle as an integral and exciting part of the learning process,” says Tanya LaMar, CEO of Struggly. “Our emphasis is on sense-making rather than procedural answer finding; our tasks are designed to promote this.”

How Does Struggly Work?

It’s easy for teachers to create a classroom and start adding students, either via CSV file upload or by manual addition. To add students manually, simply check the “Autogenerate passwords” box and fill in first and last name and user name. No email addresses required! Instead, once the class is complete, print a PDF with the student login information generated by Struggly. Simply share the classroom link and students can login via QR code or password.

Teachers assign tasks and monitor student progress via the “Student Progress” dashboard. Progress is reported in terms of persistence, creativity, strategy, and completion as well as number sense, patterns, and mistakes.

Struggly’s gamified tasks are unusual in that no direct instructions are provided. Users are presented with a relatively simple interactive gamefield that they explore with their mouse, clicking on likely graphics in order to understand the task and the results that ensue from a particular action. In other words, users must not only provide the answers, but also the questions! This is part of the Struggly philosophy, which emphasizes student learning through creativity and strategy during gameplay.

Student errors are met with various messages encouraging them to persist. I confess to a certain amount of frustration (okay, a lot of frustration) as I struggled valiantly with the Arithmagons game above level one. My error was in seeking a solution based on all of the elements in the gamefield while failing to see that each group of three elements contained its own solution. However, Struggly’s algorithm did not offer any hints or help except to display my incorrect answers.

Fortunately, the “About” commentary that accompanies each task clarified my error in understanding the gamefield solution. Since students don’t have access to the game commentary, it’s important for teachers to notice when kids are struggling past the point of benefit in a particular game.

What are the best Struggly features?

Dashboards

Struggly’s dashboards allow teachers to easily track student progress in their assigned tasks. In additional to individual progress, overall class statistics can also be viewed. Other dashboards display all tasks, task activity in real time, and class rosters.

Educator Guidance: FAQs, Webinars, Interviews and Video Guides

While students are encouraged to struggle with their assigned tasks, educators (thankfully) receive plenty of useful direction from Struggly’s FAQs, which serve as a quick-access educator guide to monitoring progress and teaching with Struggly. To dive deeper into Struggly’s tools and methods and to understand how other teachers use Struggly, check out the Free Resources, which provides extensive exploration via webinars, interviews, and video games.

Reflect and reason questions

Each task page includes “reflect and reason” questions, intended for use once students have practiced a task and become familiar with it. These thought-provoking, open-ended inquiries guide students in solidifying and articulating their understanding of the underlying game principles.

Struggly Mode

Struggly mode allows students who have completed an assigned task to jump into playing other unlocked tasks. Additionally, they can “earn” more playing time and more unlocked tasks by playing on their own time and at home.

How much does Struggly Cost?

Struggly features refreshingly transparent pricing for individual education plans: the Basic account costs $240/year and includes up to 30 student accounts and one teacher.

The Tailored account costs from $8/student per year and includes site or district licenses with teacher and administrator accounts.

Families have the option of an annual account at $120/year for up to five children, or a $12 monthly account.

A generous 60-day free trial with no credit card required is available to educators to determine if Struggly will be a fit for their classroom.

School is back in full swing for many, with many exciting introductory activities, All About Me boards, and Get to Know You questionnaires. As we get more into carrying out lessons, teachers will also need ways to collect formative math assessment data to ensure that students are making progress, identify gaps in learning, and to gain an overall pulse on the classroom environment.

While Desmos is a popular digital tool for math teaching and learning, there are other tools and ways that can be used to capture math assessment data across various areas including algebra, economics, geometry, and statistics, to name a few. The great thing about many digital tools is the flexibility of use across content areas.

In a previous article we discussed leveraging technology to assess student learning, broadly focusing on infographics, mind mapping and demonstrations across content areas. In this article we discuss ways to use Plickers, polling, and QR codes and to capture real-time formative assessment data in math classrooms.

Plickers

As many schools have been altering cell phone and device policies, Plickers offers an opportunity for teachers to use a free online technology platform to create formative assessment questions, and allows for students to respond without the requirement of having to have a technology device. To learn more about how Plickers work, check out Plickers: How to Use It to Teach.

Plickers can be used to collect formative math assessment data when teaching arithmetic and algebra by having students select the correct solution to number problems and algebraic equations. It might be helpful to allow students to have a dry erase board or scratch paper to work through some of the problems, as both are low-tech options that would align well with the use of Plickers. When done with their work, students hold up the Plicker response card (looks similar to a QR Code) that matches their selected answer.

Plickers may be particularly useful in schools with limited or no broadband internet access, and the collected data will still be able to be accessed in the future for review.

Polls

As an alternative to a quiz, engaging poll questions could be asked during lessons to capture formative math assessment data. Many polling tools are available, with different features.

Slido is one option, which is seamlessly embedded into Google Slides presentations, while Kahoot! offers a more gamified experience. Regardless of the tool used, asking a variety of poll question types can help gather unique information on students’ learning. This means using multiple choice, open-ended, word cloud, and even the doodle features.

When creating a poll question, a teacher can insert images of household and community items and spaces, for example, and have students submit a poll response on what type of angle it closely represents. Using polls with graphs and tables while asking students questions about statistics (probability) and economics (supply and demand) content could encourage discussion, and help clarify their understanding of topics.

QR Codes

QR codes could be seen as more of a high-tech version of Plickers. Scanning a QR Code will require a device, but can also allow students to move around the classroom and work more independently or in teams.

QR codes can be used for simple and complex math word problems. For example, a gallery walk with QR codes could be placed around the classroom to encourage movement, and students can use the QR codes to solve the word problems. QR Codes scanned can take students to a prompt that could be on a platform into which students can type, such as Padlet or a Google Doc. In these platforms, students can work through the word problems, jot down notes, and develop the solution. You can also create a resource space for where QR codes lead to alternative questions (hints) that can support students in solving the word problem.

Whether you use Plickers, polls or QR codes, choose technology tools that you and your students have access to and that can help you gather, in real-time, formative assessment data, while making learning math an engaging and exciting experience.

• Leveraging Technology to Assess Student Learning
• Revising Lessons to Include AI

FitMoney $uperSquad is a gamified platform that aims to help students learn about finances. It does this for free through the resources on this digital platform.

The idea here is to teach those financial skills that perhaps fall between the cracks of standard education. This, in theory, can help kids to have a great financial understanding that could set them in better stead for future life decisions.

So while this can be taught in class, it can also be done on student time, and then perhaps supplemented by class lessons, as a way to integrate these skills into other areas of education and their lives.

This guide aims to explain all you need to know about how FitMoney $uperSquad could work in your class.

What is FitMoney $uperSquad?

FitMoney $uperSquad is a digital learning resource aimed at students K-6 as a way to teach financial literacy.

As one California teacher puts it: "In a world in which so many adults are struggling with how to spend, save, and invest, this curriculum will help students with building strong financial habits early in life."

The curriculum is divided into modules, and is taught in a game-based way to ensure it's fun and engaging for students across a wide range of ages.

This is broken down into various ways to be taught from educators to students to caregivers. The idea being that this can be a supported learning experience no matter the child's circumstances.

How does FitMoney $uperSquad work?

FitMoney $uperSquad is fun to interact with thanks to a selection of videos and games. While the videos primarily are used to teach concepts, the games allow students to gain deeper understanding and mastery of that topic.

All set in the land of Fitonia, students progress through the modules gaining coins and certificates as they go. These coins can be spent to personalize their avatars, further adding to the learning about earning and spending.

Core lesson subjects include what money is, how to value it, and how to count. Go a little deeper and it moves on to areas such as credit, saving, budgeting, insurance, taxes, and investing.

Suggestions for extending the learning are plentiful, which can be helpful for teachers to expand on to help students gain a more rich understanding of what's being taught.

What are the best FitMoney $uperSquad features?

FitMoney $uperSquad is helpfully broken up into modules that allow teachers, and students, to learn in a digestible way that progresses through the subject of finances with increasing complexity.

Since the games are fun, colorful, and engaging they can help to teach students of varying abilities and ages -- giving them all access to this useful life skill.

It offers five to six courses than span a year, with lessons tailored to grade levels and discussion guides for use by teachers and parents with students.

Teachers can sign up to be part of the design challenge for STEM middle school learning, too. Also, the online certificate is built for classroom use with teachers and students working through together.

All 12 modules are available in English or Spanish, and can be self-directed from a browser to make this as accessible as possible.

How much does FitMoney $uperSquad cost?

FitMoney $uperSquad has been built to offer these skills to students without charge. One of the pillars of the company's structure is to offer these learnings for free to all who seek them.

That means there is no need to give personal information, no charges at all, and no advertising.

The company accepts donations as part of its mission to offer this service to as many children as it can for free.

FitMoney $uperSquad best tips and tricks

Start solo
Have students work their way through appropriate modules before working as a class on what was learned.

Work as a group
Present the videos to the class and work through the games as a team, helping each other supportively to master each area.

Supplement
Expand from an area and supplement learning with real-world experiences that can help students see finances in action.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

The principles of mathematics underlie all physical properties of our world. Math is the language of the universe, and as such, everything in both nature and modern life depends on it.

But math is a tough subject for many students, who may find it remote, unintuitive, and unrelated to their daily life. Yet it doesn't have to be that way. The GeoGebra platform allows student to learn math concepts through visual and interactive tools that encourage exploration—and even play.

What is GeoGebra?

GeoGebra is an award-winning suite of math apps and interactives that integrates and visualizes the teaching of algebra and geometry. Founded in 2001 by Markus Hohenwarter, a talented master’s student, the platform is free for teachers and students, and is available for desktop computers and mobile devices.

In partnership with Illustrative Math, GeoGebra also provides a digital math curriculum easily integrated with Google Classroom.

How is GeoGebra Pronounced?

The word GeoGebra, a portmanteau of algebra and geometry, is pronounced with two soft gs, as follows: Jee-OH-je-bra.

How does GeoGebra Work?

Although an account is not required for teachers or students, it’s best for both to create a free account. For teachers, it's essential in order to make the most of the platform. By doing so, they will be able to easily access their favorite tools, lessons, and applets.

Users can create an account with email or sign in with their existing Google, Office 365, Microsoft, Facebook, or Clever accounts. Teachers who find it simpler not to have to deal with login issues during precious class time may choose not to require student accounts.

GeoGebra’s free apps support all devices and operating systems (Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS), allowing students to use GeoGebra on phones or other mobile devices.

GeoGebra’s interface is clean and uncluttered, fairly intuitive, and a pleasure to browse. Nonetheless, due to the extensive offerings, teachers should be prepared to spend some time exploring the site, trying out the interactives and lessons, and bookmarking resources, before teaching with it.

Finding Resources
Teachers can search for math resources using the search bar or the Math Topic Map, which includes eight topics ranging from Arithmetic to Statistics.

What are the Best GeoGebra Features?

Resource Library
GeoGebra hosts an extensive resource library of more than one million math learning resources, including lessons, exercises, digital books, and interactives, available in several languages. Resources are contributed by GeoGebra’s global community, many of whom are expert users and educators. The GeoGebra Content Team, an international group of professionals, is the "official" platform content author, working under strict guidelines and standards. Yet many other authors also provide top-quality resources, and users can follow authors in order to easily track their latest contributions.

Real-Time Monitoring of Student Work
Once an activity has been assigned to students, teachers can view their work in real time. A thumbnail image updates automatically as students work.

Powerful Calculator Suite
GeoGebra's calculator suite offers six calculators for math and science:

• Graphing
• 3D Calculator
• Geometry
• CAS (computer algebra system)
• Probability
• Scientific

Calculators provides extensive tools for drawing lines, angles, polygons, and circles, as well as the ability to insert images, text, tables, and spreadsheets.

Users can quickly graph an equation by entering it freehand or using the scientific keyboard.

Help Links/Learn GeoGebra
Although many of the tools and operations within the GeoGebra platform can be understood intuitively or through trial and error, some may not be obvious. For example, I confess that I thought that the parallel line tool wasn't functional, because every time I tried to use it, it failed. Finally, I clicked the little "Help" link and quickly realized my error and was able to create the parallel line. Throughout the platform, there are many such Help links associated with tools.

For those who would prefer to review the FAQS and tool overviews first, the Learn GeoGebra page is a great place to start.

How Can Teachers Use GeoGebra in the Classroom?

Demonstration
Teachers can use GeoGebra to demonstrate math and science concepts dynamically, dragging lines, points, sliders, and shapes in order to visualize the effects of changing parameters.

Exploration
By assigning ready-made or customized activities in class, teachers can give students time to explore and practice in a low-pressure environment.

Formative Assessment
GeoGebra's practice modules provide hints and instant feedback, allowing students to learn from their mistakes, while teachers can view student progress in real-time thumbnails.

Is GeoGebra Safe for Kids?

GeoGebra complies with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and does not share personal information with third parties. No personal information beyond an email address is required to create an account, although users may choose to include additional information after the account is created.

How Much Does GeoGebra Cost?

The GeoGebra License states that users are free to copy, distribute and transmit GeoGebra for non-commercial purposes. That means it’s 100% free for students and teachers who use GeoGebra for the purposes of academic study and teaching.

Commercial users pay a fee, which helps to support the non-commercial academic use and allows the platform to update and improve.

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What If Math uses a relatively new concept to enhance the way math is taught so that kids are given more relevant skills for today's digital world.

The company says that the way math -- and algebra specifically -- is taught today is based on a concept developed by Leonardo of Pisa in 1202 as a way to help traders. This, it says, is now redundant thanks to all the digital tools that use spreadsheets to do that part of mathematical working.

This is where What If Math comes in, as a way to teach math using spreadsheets so students gain real-world math skills to eventually help them in the workplace. In the more short term, it provides them with the tools to explore questions that can help expand their knowledge of math, logic, science, and more.

This guide aims to explain all you need to know about What If Math to see how it could work in your class.

What is What If Math?

What If Math is website that uses spreadsheet-based teaching to help students learn math in a functional way that can be directly implemented with current digital tools.

This platform works with K-12 curriculum to help students learn math on a functional foundation using spreadsheets. These, the company says, are what it thinks of as laboratories. Within this space students can explore, try, and be challenged using the powerful tools that are already available.

Since this works with spreadsheets as the base, it's possible to do this kind of teaching using free options such as Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel to play with tablets, graphs, formulas, and visualizations.

The system works with various layer to help guide students into learning more.

How does What If Math work?

What If Math offers what it calls Labs. These are spreadsheet-based lessons with single experiment concepts that allow students to explore that question of what if?

Usefully, lessons are designed with timing in mind and are made to last the duration of a class period. That said, since these offer open-ended questions, there is the option for students to explore further and in more depth as they please.

Another area is Explorations. These are projects that set a problem task that students have to work through as collaborative groups. These involve real-world activities and can involve using spreadsheets, functional thinking, computer science, and data science.

In both instances, the lessons are designed for teachers to be taught to a class and shared with students to access as they need.

What are the best What If Math features?

What If Math offers a way for teachers to pick and chose what parts to use and offer as experiential learning for students. That can be the more individual-focused Lab materials or the more active and group-focused Explorations.

In both cases, since these are built to be taught in class, there are excellent timings to work through in a lesson, as well as to set further explorations outside of class.

Since the Labs are designed for use with real spreadsheets, these teach students valuable skills that can be used in science, business, math, and more.

Since this use of spreadsheets is a form of programming, this sets students up for coding in a way comes from a place of understanding and experience.

Select a link and you're immediately taken to the Google Sheets lesson plan with guidance on how to work through that task.

How much does What If Math cost?

What If Math is totally free to access and use with all the Labs and Explorations available online for teachers and students to access.

What If Math best tips and tricks

Teach yourself
Work through a Lab yourself as a way to understand how this works and is taught before taking that to the class.

Use the Introduction
A helpful introduction part of the site teaches how this works and is a great way to ease students into understanding.

Share openly
Compile the lessons on your shared drive so students can have access to the materials as and when they need, allowing them to explore freely.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
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ClassPad.net is an online calculator system that's designed for use by teachers and students in education.

This is not to be confused with the real-world gadget version, simply called ClassPad, which was released by Casio. This online version works in a very similar way, only without the need for the physical device.

While this digital version is designed to offer lots of functionality -- including geometry, algebra, graphing, and more -- the physical ClassPad does offer even deeper levels of functionality.

This guides aims to explain all you need to know about ClassPad.net to see how it could benefit your class.

What is ClassPad.net?

ClassPad.net is an online calculator resource designed and offered for free by Casio. This is the digital version of the more complex physical ClassPad device.

Since Casio has been perfecting this technology in its physical calculators for decades, the online version is well refined. This translates to something that is easy enough to use for younger and newer students but offers enough depth and complexity for more advanced users and their requirements.

The basic version allows for work with tasks such as primary computational and trigonometric functions. Features such as the graphing and number line sticky are available if you want to get a more visualized expression of the numbers.

Since this works across multiple devices, via a web app in a browser, it's highly accessible so students can use this on their personal devices.

How does ClassPad.net work?

ClassPad.net offers a free version of its web app that allows anyone to get going right away. This, called the Math Core, gives pretty helpful functionality that should cover most classes for the basics of a scientific calculator and more.

You can also use a single sign on, if paying for an account, to access the more complex version of the app that offers functionality more akin to the physical ClassPad device itself.

Students, and teachers, are also able to draw freehand, ideally suited to touchscreen devices. Then, it's possible to click and move specific coordinates using a cursor, which is well suited to a mouse-enabled devices as well as touchscreens.

Users can sign in with accounts including Google Classroom and Clever, making integration into a current class setup quite straight forward.

What are the best ClassPad.net features?

ClassPad.net is really feature-rich -- it's a full scientific calculator for free but more, too. Students can use this for trigonometry, arithmetic, geometry, function graphing, tables, sequences, and more.

Teachers are also able to get more out of this than a standard calculator might offer. Thanks to TeX support, it is possible for students to describe their work or make notes for use later. Crucially, teachers also can prompt tasks or setup calculations to work through. Essentially, this creates a guidance dialogue right within the app itself.

Since students and teachers can directly play with graphs and geometric features, it allows for a really interactive and visually clear way to manipulate the numbers.

This works on smartphones and tablets as well as computers so it can be used widely in class as well as outside the room. That can mean super affordable uptake for schools as well as a reliable device to support students wherever they are.

How much does ClassPad.net cost?

ClassPad.net does offer a lot for free, but for the more complex features there are paid tiers available.

The Free version gets you a full scientific calculator plus functionality for trigonometry, arithmetic, geometry, function graphing, tables, sequences, and more.

The ClassWiz plan, at $14.95/year, gets you the above plus ClassWiz Emulator, allowing teachers to share screens with students, for use with ClassPad Math.

Go for the Math Plus subscription, at $24.95/year, and you also get CAS, advanced statistical calculations, financial calculation functions, and handwriting recognition.

ClassPad.net best tips and tricks

Start big
Display the ClassPad app on the big screen and teach the class how to use it and how it can be fun to manipulate visually.

Get personal
Have students play with the app on their devices and tackle questions in the class to help them ease into understanding use.

Set tasks
Have students go home and work with the device for tasks, so they have to get to grips with it, then review how it went when back in class.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
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In an episode of Seinfeld, George Costanza famously started leaving meetings or conversations with friends early after he told a funny story in order to end on a high note.

I was recently reminded of this episode by David Miele, program director of Applied Developmental & Educational Psychology at Boston College, because there’s a lesson here linked to student motivation.

Researchers have long known that as school tasks become more difficult student motivation can decrease as they encounter more failure. Building in opportunities for success — for instance, by giving them easier math questions — can counteract this, but runs the risk of watering down the content being taught, Miele says.

Separate research indicates that people remember the beginning and ends of tasks best through what psychologists call "primacy" and "recency" effects. They also seem to better remember specific parts.

“People tend to overweight the pleasure or pain they experienced at the end of the task, but also at the most intense point of the task,” says Miele.

This is where the idea of George Costanza leaving on a high note comes in--research done with adults has found what is termed the “remembered success effect” in which academic tasks that start or end with extra opportunities for success were found to be preferred to the challenging tasks alone.

Miele and his colleagues, including Bridgid Finn (who Miele stresses was really instrumental in this research), wondered if they could boost student motivation without decreasing academic rigor by providing mostly rigorous questions in a text or activity but also including some easier questions at the beginning or end of the exam.

Ultimately, what they found suggests there are some simple ways teachers can motivate student activity.

The Remembered Success Effect

To study the remembered success effect in children, Miele and his colleagues worked with 570 third- and sixth-graders for a paper published in 2024. All students were given an assessment with 10 difficult math problems. Some students were also given five additional questions that were easier.

The study found that in both grades, students who got the additional questions at the beginning or end of the session valued the activity to a greater extent. Although the task with the additional easier questions took longer to complete, it didn't feel that way for students.

“There was also a tendency to perceive the longer task as having been the shorter task,” Miele says. This study potentially has big implications for how teachers motivate students through difficult tasks.

Takeaways From This Research For Teachers

Miele notes this research suggests there are steps that teachers can do to maintain students positive evaluations toward a really challenging task without watering it down. These steps have the added benefit of being low-cost and not requiring a tremendous amount of time for teachers to undertake, he says.

“It could be as simple as just taking some problems that they know to be relatively easier and positioning them in the beginning or end of the task,” he says.

Some caveats are needed, however. To get the desired effect, these questions need to go at the beginning or end of the assignment. Also, some studies suggest adding questions can still fatigue students even if they don’t perceive it.

“There might be potential fatigue effects associated with doing more math problems, even though subjectively, they're like, ‘I enjoy that task more.’ It doesn't mean that they're not a little bit more tired out by having solved more math problems,” Miele says.

Knowing this can influence how a teacher plans follow-up activities. Also, if you’re planning multiple activities, constantly tacking on additional questions could start to be counterproductive due to fatigue, Miele says.

Of course, more research on all this is still needed to better piece out how and when the remembered success effect can best be utilized. Miele is working on further studies to fine-tune how teachers can best use the remembered success effect.

But for now, we're going to follow George Costanza’s lesson and end here on a high note: “Alright, that's it for me. Goodnight everybody!”

• The Research-Practice Divide is Real. Here's How To Overcome It.
• AI-Assisted Characters Help Students Learn From TV, According to Harvard-Led Research

SplashLearn uses a gamified setup that allows students to learn math, reading, and more in a fun and engaging way. Since this is school-focused, teachers can monitor progress using a powerful reporting system.

This is a well-developed system used by more than 40 million and, specifically, 500,000+ teachers worldwide. According to the company: "Children who play SplashLearn more than four times a week show learning improvement of more than 77% within the first two months."

At time of publishing, there are more than 4,400 games and more than 4,500 worksheets available to use. That should mean a wide range of options that suits most students in terms of ages and abilities.

What is SplashLearn?

SplashLearn is a teaching tool that focuses on gamified math but also now extends to others areas of learning including reading and problem solving.

Thanks to Common Core-aligned standards, this works to meet the student at their level with a focus on guiding them to the their target for that year. This makes it an effective supplementary learning tool, while also being fun in a way that helps bring students back for more.

Teachers can use this in class or to set homework, allowing students to work toward progressing on their own time -- with any strides made being clearly reported to the teacher dashboard.

How does SplashLearn work?

SplashLearn lets you, as a parent or teacher, assign the right work for each student. You can input the levels they are at, what they need to work on, and a results-based focus. All that should mean a personalized learning experience for each student that adapts to their needs using AI.

This can be used as a formative assessment tool for teachers to see student progress and adapt lessons accordingly. Thanks to the Common Core mapping, this process is made clear from the software end so that teachers can plan around that from the start.

Students can work through questions and they will be given immediate feedback. If a question is missed, they get the correct answer shown with a small explanation section.

What are the best SplashLearn features?

SplashLearn is bright, colorful, and fun, making it a really inviting space for younger students and older kids alike. Everything is laid out in a simple and clear fashion, adapted to suit both smartphone and desktop devices via a browser.

Single player games as well a multiplayer options are available, which can make for a more sociable and real-world experience. Each game offers clear guidance when getting started so even younger students can get going with little to no teacher assistance needed -- even on new games.

Lots of worksheets can be downloaded and printed, making in-class offline practice a real possibility, too.

The teacher and parent dashboard, which offers student progress, is a great way to see how they're developing in order to offer help or adapt teaching as needed.

How much does SplashLearn cost?

SplashLearn works on a payment system in which you can trial for free initially, if you provide your credit card details up front, giving you seven days.

Schools can get a quote-based pricing that unlocks all the features for student use across the school, or district, with teacher dashboard access for feedback.

Parents can pay annually at $60 for math, $60 for reading, or $90 for both. A family plan also offers access for three-child accounts.

SplashLearn best tips and tricks

Go home
Enable home access so that students can access learning when they want, allowing for greater mastery on their own time.

Assign specifically
Give students assignment to suit their interests, areas for improvement, and progress so that they feel pushed just the right amount.

Use rewards
Students earn coins and stars in the games so make these equate to real-world privileges in class to incentivize them further.

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Polypad is an award-winning digital math playground. Its virtual interactive whiteboard incorporates shapes, colors, graphs, music, and other tools to teach geometry, algebra, probability, and statistics to middle and high school students.

The highly structured yet simultaneously free-form design of Polypad encourages students to explore on their own, while allowing educators a broad ability to customize lessons.

Originally created by the founders of Mathigon, Polypad was acquired by Amplify in 2021.

What is Polypad?

Polypad is a powerful virtual manipulative website for mathematics, designed for middle and high school students. Requiring no login or installation, Polypad runs on all devices and browsers.

With its clever drag-n-drop interface, multimedia tools, and colorful manipulatives, it’s sure to engage even the most reluctant math learners.

How does Polypad Work?

Students and teachers can immediately start using Polypad without creating an account. However, creating a free account allows saving and sharing with others, and is therefore ideal.

Teachers can create their free account easily via email, Google, Amplify, or Desmos Classroom account. Student account creation is similar to teachers, with the exception of kids younger than 13. Teachers can welcome these younger students to the platform by creating a free account in Desmos Classroom as described in student account creation.

The Polypad welcome screen highlights several interesting features, such as winners of the 2024 Polypad Art and Music Contest and testimonials from teachers and students. But if you’re ready to start exploring, simply click the Launch Polypad button. Or, to learn more about each of the tools, click Tutorials, through which teachers can discover how to customize, assign, and share Polypad activities with students.

Polypad boasts a remarkably clean, user-friendly interface and easy navigation, with an integrated help menu that makes it super simple to learn about every tool.

When you first open Polypad, you’re greeted by a blank virtual whiteboard with a bottom toolbar, side toolbar, and top left main menu. Click on any left menu element to expand its contents, view tooltips, or the help menu entry for that tool. To use any element, simply drag it to the whiteboard, where the intuitive toolbars allow you to easily change colors, draw, add equations, text and images or export as a png, jpeg, or svg image.

The core functions of Polypad are housed in the Tiles menu, where users will find a wide variety of interactive math tools, in the categories of: geometry; numbers; fractions; algebra; probability and data; and games and applications.

Using Activity Builder with Polypad

Polypad can be used as a stand-alone tool or as a collection of assignable activities and lessons. Amplify's Desmos Classroom Activity Builder allows educators to create multimedia assignable activities using a wide variety of tools for text, image creation, assessment, free response, and of course, Polypad.

To build custom teaching activities, visit https://teacher.desmos.com, create your free Desmos Classroom teacher account, or log in to your existing account. Then navigate to Desmos Activity Builder. In the left menu, click Custom Activities>>Create a New Activity. Name your new activity, select the viewing option (link or private), and briefly describe the activity. These attributes can be easily edited later, so feel free to use placeholder text until you’re ready to share or assign the activity.

Now select Polypad (and/or other elements) from the left menu to build your activity. When you drag the Polypad icon into the activity window, you’ve actually imported the entire Polypad functionality, allowing you to incorporate any of its tools into your lesson.

What are the Best Polypad Features?

Polypad Tutorials

Mathigon's YouTube channel hosts Polypad tutorials that offer step-by-step guidance from the Polypad team on using its tools. Exploring on your own, you might miss the hidden gem Hand Tiles or the fact that Hand Tiles interact with other tools, such as the Algebra Balance Scale. These video tutorials demonstrate the wide-open possibilities for teaching math with Polypad.

Puzzles, Activities, and Lesson Plans

Polypad's interactive tools are in one sense very simple -- users can start experimenting right away without an extensive how-to. Yet, for teachers who have never used Polypad, it may be a bit overwhelming to contemplate how best to implement them into the curriculum. Fortunately, Polypad's extensive set of pre-designed puzzles, activities, and lesson plans offer expert guidance and ideas for use with students.

Assigning Activities

Once you've created your custom Polypad activity, you're able to assign it to members of your class.

First, create your class by choosing Classes in left menu, then Add New Class. An invite code for students will be automatically generated. If you already have classes in Google Classroom, you can simply import from there.

When you open your activity, click the desired option in the Assign menu.

How Much Does Polypad Cost?

Polypad is fully free. It's also free for teachers and students to create a Desmos Classroom account and use Activity Builder to create, assign or complete activities.

Polypad Best Tips and Tricks

Polypad Games and Applications

Polypad's games and apps include chess, logic and computing, currencies, clocks, dominoes, and—best of all—music. Simply drag the keyboard into the workspace and start playing and recording. Not sure what to do? Open the Music and Sonification Help Menu for guidance on using the tools.

Make Your Shapes Sing

Polypad polygons not only have brilliant colors, but also incorporate musical tones that represent their properties, including vertices, perimeter, area, angles, and fractions.

Ask for Help

The built-in Help menu is fully integrated into the Polypad workspace. Just click the question mark on any tile to instantly view the tile summary, examples and lesson ideas.

Accessibility

For students using adaptive technologies such as screen readers, keyboard shortcuts enable them to fully participate in the lesson.

What's Next for Polypad?

Polypad used to be part of Mathigon.org. Both Mathigon and Desmos Classroom were acquired by Amplify, which is in the process of merging and integrating all three products. Tech & Learning is following the developments and will update readers on the integration of these valuable teaching tools.

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Building a strong foundation in Algebra 1 is critical to students’ success in higher-level mathematics and in college and careers. But Algebra can be challenging to learn — and teach.

I moved from teaching seventh grade to teaching Algebra 1 at West Jones High School (WJHS) in 2016, which was the same year the state department of education introduced new college- and career-readiness standards for mathematics. While I was excited about the new standards, the textbook we were using was old (my colleague said it was the same one she used in high school), and our students struggled with the rigor required.

In the spring of 2017, only 37% of WJHS students scored at the proficient level or above on the state Algebra 1 assessment. We knew we had to raise our scores, so we took a different approach in 2017-18 and our school’s Algebra 1 proficiency rate jumped to 59% — a gain of 22 percentage points. In my Algebra 1 classes, my students’ proficiency numbers jumped from 38% in 2017 to 66% in 2018 and have been climbing ever since.

Here are a few tips and lessons learned in our efforts to turn our scores around.

Teach with rigor using standards-aligned resources

No matter what subject I have taught, I have always added to the curriculum provided by the school district to enrich the quality of my instruction and provide meaningful content to students. So, when the Mississippi Legislature funded a supplemental program called Math Nation and made it available for all Mississippi public schools to use if they were interested, my colleague and I decided to try it out to supplement our district’s textbook.

When I moved to the online math learning platform, I had never had so many resources readily available that aligned with our state standards. I had access to guided lesson notes along with lesson videos, practice, activities, and assessments for my students. I must admit, I was a little overwhelmed at first. So, I decided to try one thing at a time and built from there.

As I dug into the Algebra 1 resources, I realized that the year prior, I had just been skimming the surface. Now we get very deep very fast, and the content spirals and builds so students can reinforce and deepen their learning each time they return to a concept.

Whatever program you choose, use it with fidelity

My students and I use the Math Nation platform every day, and we use every component. That fidelity is important for student buy-in. Once my students see that I’m fully committed, they get behind it, too. Now, even when they struggle with a problem, they say, “Let me do this. I know I can do it.”

Meet students where they are and build from there

Every group of students that arrives in my classroom is different. Even if some learners aren’t quite ready for Algebra 1, I know they can do the work with the right supports. At the beginning of the school year, we often use the On-Ramp tool within the platform’s student dashboard to help diagnose and remediate gaps in foundational math or pre-algebra concepts. Each learner can also access these individualized remediation tools to address any unfinished learning they may have that relates to the content a unit will cover.

Within each unit, students can also access content videos with examples and practice problems. They can choose from multiple instructors who teach the same material but in different ways and at different paces. If students miss school, I can ask them to watch the videos at home, which frees up my time since I no longer have to stay after school to help them with makeup work. I also like watching the videos to view different teaching styles so I can find ways to relate to my students who learn in different ways.

Establish a professional learning community (PLC) to foster collaboration

I set up an official Algebra PLC meeting on Thursdays at WJHS, and I continue to facilitate this group today. Outside of our weekly meetings, we talk almost daily. Over lunch or in the hallway, we chat about what’s going on in our classrooms, and where students are struggling or doing really well. We share teaching strategies and activities, and brainstorm ideas. Thanks to our ongoing collaboration, we continue to grow in our teaching skills and expertise in Algebra 1.

Use data to monitor progress toward the standards and drive decisions

At the end of every nine weeks, we do a common assessment across our district. This allows us to see how our students score on each standard so we know where to intervene. We share our data in our PLC so we can dig into what worked well and what didn’t, and help each other improve. If we need to provide more practice to students on a particular standard, we can also look up where it has been or will be covered in the online platform and pull resources as needed.

Achieving steady growth

Over the last seven years, our PLC and online math platform have changed my teaching. Previously when I was teaching seventh grade, I felt like I was on an island by myself. Now, I have seen my dream come to life as I work collaboratively with my colleagues to improve student experiences and build a community that’s excited about math.

Our test scores show that our efforts are working. On the 2024 Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP), 75% of WJHS students scored at the proficient level or above in Algebra 1. This not only exceeded the state average of 67%, but it surpassed the proficiency rates of our district’s other two high schools as well.

Our accomplishments are all centered on our love for Algebra 1. I have never taught as deeply as I do now. My students are engaged, and they’ve gained confidence in their abilities because they are experiencing success in a rigorous class. They see themselves as capable mathematicians, which sets the stage for successes here and wherever they go in their futures.

• Photomath: How to Use It to Teach
• Best Math Sites and Apps for Education

Math is more than arithmetic, geometry, or algebra. It's also a language that describes everything in the universe to a precision far beyond what words convey, as well as a system of logical thinking.

Yet math is not a natural language for many kids. They may struggle not only with understanding math concepts, but also with understanding why it should matter to them.

But when kids become immersed in math games and activities, they learn in spite of their misgivings. Make your math lessons engaging, exciting and fun with these top math apps and websites, many of which are free or modestly priced.

Best Math Sites for Education

Illustrative Mathematics Curriculum
Founded in 2011 at the University of Arizona, Illustrative Mathematics is a research-based, standards-aligned comprehensive set of K-12 math curricula, including lesson plans, professional learning, and community support. Site visitors can browse lessons without logging in, but to explore the full curriculum, educators must create a free account and verify their identity.

Better Explained
Founded by a former Microsoft program manager, Better Explained aims to help students grasp math concepts, using real-world illustrations, colorized text, metaphors, and humor. This site isn’t just about math -- it’s also about how people learn. Explore topics such as “Learning math? Think like a cartoonist,” “Learning to Learn: Math Abstraction,” and many others. Informative and enjoyable.

What If Math
A fascinating free site dedicated to the idea of math as an experimental science and the use of spreadsheets to understand and solve problems, What if Math was created by math educators seeking a better way to teach math concepts. Dozens of spreadsheets cover topics from “Absolute Value Functions” through “What is x?” while the ebook What if..the Idea that Changed the World investigates the centuries-old basis for our current math education and how it no longer applies to our modern world.

Math Playground
No account is required to “give your brain a workout” with this extensive collection of math, logic, skills, and word games for K-6 students. Created by educator Coleen King, Math Playground is kidSAFE/COPPA Certified and includes only COPPA-certified children's ads. Want to go ad-free? Consider the modestly priced premium plans for teachers, as low as $5 monthly for an entire classroom. Shareable in Google Classroom.

ClassPad
A free online math tool that provides a digital “scratch pad” to solve any math problem, including calculus, geometry, graphing, statistics, and more, Classpad’s intuitive, sophisticated workspace is easy to try with no account set up required. Users can also quickly sign in with their Google account. A Tech & Learning Back to School award winner. `

Math is Fun
When I come across an interesting free site that looks like it was last updated in the year 2000, I investigate more deeply to be sure that's not the case. Although Math is Fun presents a dated interface, the site is fully functional and up-to-date. Moreover, its math games and logic puzzles are fascinating and, in some cases, unique. Well worth investigating . Free, no account required. Bonus: the "Hide Ads" feature will keep ads hidden for 36 hours. Ads can also be blocked by your browser's ad blocker.

ABCYA
Terrific resource for educational games in a wide range of subjects including math. Games can be searched by Common Core State Standards, as well as Next Generation Science Standards. Fully free for desktop use, premium plan for mobile devices.

Funbrain
The aptly named Funbrain offers a fine selection of math games and videos for kids in grades preK-8, searchable by grade and topic. Free, no account required.

iKnowIt
A comprehensive interactive math practice site for K-5 students, IKnowit's generous 30-day free trial (no credit card required) allows teachers to fully experience the site before purchasing. The annual cost of $150 provides access to more than 500 Common Core State Standard-aligned math lessons for one teacher and 25 students, each of whom has their own login. Clear navigation and good design makes it a pleasure to explore.

Math Games
A variety of fun, imaginative math skill games are offered free (with blockable ads) or as part of modestly-priced monthly or annual plans for teachers. District-level membership is also available. Searchable by grade, category, standard and skill.

Math Game Time
Large selection of free educational math games, videos, and worksheets, searchable by topic and grade. Despite the early Web 2.0 interface, the site is easy to navigate and loads quickly. No account required.

RoomRecess
Free K-6 educational math games, quizzes, and puzzles. No account required.

Zapzapmath
A curriculum-aligned site for math grades K-6, with an online teacher dashboard for tracking student progress and creating reports. The free basic account allows for one class of up to forty students, and provides teachers’ guides and student reports.

Best Math Apps for Education

Monsters vs. Fractions iOS
Free Common Core-aligned app that helps kids learn fractions through mystery, monsters, and zombies. 'Nuff said.

Mystery Math Town iOS
An adventure-style math game for kids 6-12 that covers addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Students enter a town and try to unlock levels and characters by solving equations and finding variables.

Math and Sorcery iOS
An iOS games for learning basic math skills through playing an old-school 8bit-style role-playing game. Free with in-app purchases.

Moose Math - Duck Duck Moose iOS Android
Top-rated multi-level math game that allows kids ages 3-7 to earn rewards and decorate cities by solving math problems disguised as adventures. Topics include counting, sorting, arithmetic, geometry, and more. Common Core-aligned for kindergarten and first grade.

Prodigy Math Game iOS Android
Prodigy uses an adaptive game-based learning approach to engage students grades 1-8 in building and practicing math skills. Math questions are aligned with state-level curricula, including Common Core and TEKS.

Math Attax iOS Android
A fast-paced single or two-player mobile math shooting game. Players practice arithmetic while playing five math games. Tournament mode offers extra excitement.

• Photomath: How to Use It to Teach
• Frax: How to Use It to Teach Fractions
• Best STEM Apps For Education

Frax is a web-based tool for teaching students fractions, which uses games to make it fun and engaging.

According to its makers, ExploreLearning, fraction knowledge in grade five can predict student success in algebra and more. Using research-based training, these games help students understand fractions as numbers and better relate to numbers in general.

ESSA Tier 2 research shows using Frax results in a 3x growth for third graders and a 5x improvement for fourth graders. It also supports STEM learning.

This guide aims to lay out all you need to know about Frax and how it can work for your classroom.

What is Frax?

Frax is a digital game-based learning tool that focuses on teaching and mastering fractions. Aimed at third, fourth, and fifth graders specifically, this platform aims to make fraction learning fun and engaging.

Through a series of games, with characters the students come to know, progress can be made through a fictional world in which knowing fractions helps conquer the game's challenges.

The game not only uses missions as a way to break up concepts but also offers tokens as rewards. These can be used to attain items in a store, all of which adds to the immersive nature of this gaming world that keeps students learning.

How does Frax work?

Frax can be accessed right away, with a free 30-day trial. License options are then available, suited to varying levels that will unlock the entire product. Add your class of students and they can begin learning on any web-browser device immediately.

Students have their own accounts so they can progress, leave, and come back to continue from where they paused. The levels of the game vary with challenges facing our space-travelling characters, each requiring some sort of fraction arithmetic.

For example, a ravine could be created by a robot that our hero needs to cross and so it gets broken into five blocks that students need to drag and drop to get the right number -- five fifths -- into the spaces so the character can progress.

So a basic understanding of fractions is required but it is also very self-explanatory, which should mean all students are able to progress using this tool with minimal teacher support required.

What are the best Frax features?

Frax is fun. It's got space cats as the main characters, sees flying robots and quirky aliens make appearances, and lets the kids become the heroes. That helps to make it easy for students to keep coming back, continue learning, and to make progress toward mastery with minimal effort.

The fact that the game scaffolds fraction concepts and the math fits the storyline, all leaves it feeling seamless. This continues beyond the game as teachers can track student progress from a dashboard, ideal for guiding them to help students progress.

Tasks get progressively harder to help students grow, and at the end of each mission there is a short assessment with questions. This allows students to cement the learning but also for teachers to see how they're taking in what they're learning.

Usefully, teachers can move students ahead if needed. Although with a very compelling storyline, most will likely want to play through anyway.

How much does Frax cost?

Frax offers a free trial and is then charged for at various price points to suit needs.

The free trial lasts for 30 days and can be used by teachers, schools, or districts.

The pricing is then bespoke with rates varying to suit the levels of teacher, school, or district plans.

Frax best tips and tricks

Work in groups
Place students in ability groups so you can more easily assess and give guidance on a group-by-group basis.

Ask questions
Have students ask one another the questions at the end of sections so they can explore their mechanics more deeply together.

Teach in character
Use the game characters as you teach fractions in class, helping students touch what they know as you push to the new.

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Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania recently studied the impact of GPT-4-powered tutors on nearly a thousand high school students. The results suggest the GPT-4 tutors might themselves need additional assistance when it comes to helping students.

Students who had access to an AI tutor for practice exams did better than students without access in these practice exams. However, on a subsequent exam, when none of the students had access to an AI tutor, the students who worked with an AI tutor did worse than other students.

“Generative AI Can Harm Learning”, the paper summarizing these findings, was recently published by the Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania.

“The one-sentence punchline summary of the paper is, 'We find that generative AI could hurt learning because students potentially use it as an answer machine, as opposed to a tool that is conducive for learning,'” says Alp Sungu, one of the paper’s co-authors and a professor at the Wharton School.

However, Sungu and his co-authors stress that they are not anti-AI tutors, and believe AI tutors ultimately can be helpful in certain contexts if designed correctly.

AI GPT Tutors: How The Study Was Designed

To study the impact of AI tutors on math students, Sungu and his colleagues used separate prompts to create two different GPT-4-powered tutors. One they called “GPT Base,” which worked similarly to standard versions of ChatGPT in that if given a math problem, it will give away the answers to the question while helping students. A second GPT-4 tutor was created using more advanced prompts that told the AI not to give away the answer while working with students, and instead helped them find the answer on their own. The researchers called this “GPT Tutor.”

The researchers then worked with nearly a thousand students in Turkey who were in grades 9, 10, and 11 in the 2023-24 school year. The pre-registered randomized control trial placed students into three groups: a group with no AI tutor, a group that used the GPT Base tutor, and a group that used the more advanced GPT Tutor. After a lesson from a teacher all students in the study had a practice exam. Those with access to GPT Base did 48% better than the students without access to an AI tutor, while those with GPT Tutor performed 127% better on the practice exam.

However, on the actual test itself, the GPT-based students did 17% worse and the GPT Tutor group performed on average the same as the control group. The bright side was GPT Tutor seemed to mitigate the negative impact of an AI tutor on students, though it didn’t help them either.

“My thinking was GPT Tutor would be better than the control group,” Sungu says. “That was not the case.” However, with better prompting and improvements to the tutor in the future, he believes it could ultimately help student learning.

What Are The Takeaways For Teachers?

The study highlights some of the differences between AI use in educational settings versus professional ones.

Coders and others who use AI professionally tend to accomplish more with the help of AI. “If you give them a task, they will deliver the task more efficiently, more effectively, they become more productive,” Sungu says. “There's already a lot of literature that shows that.”

However, in education, teachers are interested not just in the immediate output but what the student has actually learned. For instance, students might be able to write more quality papers by better prompting GPT — but that doesn’t mean they’ll learn more, or anything for that matter, about writing.

This is why Sungu believes that for an AI tutor to become more effective, it will have to focus on learning rather than productivity. That requires more research specifically around AI in education. Otherwise, Sungu believes even though AI might get more advanced, it won’t change the inherent challenges surrounding AI and learning. ​​”The technology is already good at providing answers,” Sungu says. “We need to think about the design of assessment and educational delivery.”

Some might argue that since AI is available to everyone now, testing student achievement without the use of AI might no longer matter. Sungu understands that line of reasoning, and notes that there are certain technologies that make some skills obsolete, such as the calculator. “I really don't care if you cannot multiply 7 and 8 off the top of your head, because we do trust calculators,” he says.

On the other hand, there are other skills, such as critical thinking and problem-solving, that are vital for students to develop without needing to rely on machines. “The example that we give in the paper is the Federal Aviation Agency banning junior pilots from completely depending on autopilot,” Sungu says. "When autopilot is inactive, we still need people to think for themselves.”

• I Have AI Fatigue. Here's What I'm Doing to Overcome It
• Colleges Are Using AI To Predict Student Success. These Predictions Are Often Wrong

Photomath is a smartphone-based app and software extension from Google that helps with math problems. Since this works with a device's camera, it makes for a very intuitive way to get math-based guidance.

One issue with this tool is that some teachers could see it as a way for students to cheat, getting guidance on math problems and links to textbook answers. However, if not abused, this can be a helpful tool to get students unstuck on problems they may otherwise feel overwhelmed by when outside of class.

So, keep in mind that this tool is helpful but should be recommended with some guidance so students know how to use it appropriately, to help them rather than replace their learning.

This guide aims to lay out all you need to know so you can decide if Photomath could be helpful for your class.

What is Photomath?

Photomath is an app-based math tool that works on smartphones and tablets by using cameras to interact with the physical world. Students hold their device up to a math problem and the app will detect and analyze what is shown before offering solution guidance.

This represents a potential assistant to students that could be helpful when stuck on a math problem in which no guidance is available from a teacher or parent. That can mean continued progression, and potentially confidence building, while working through math tasks alone.

As mentioned, this could be used to help progress work but also to skip through. Students may use this to get quick answers to problems that allow them to solve an equation without the depth of understanding that may have come from working it through on their own and finding the solution. One way to avoid this is to use the tool in class, as a group, so all can learn how to use it positively without abusing its usefulness.

How does Photomath work?

Photomath either works within the app itself, or as a part of your Google app camera toolkit. In either case you have the camera on the device working so you can see on the screen what is printed on the paper. The app then detects math problems, after the photo is taken, and highlights these with digital brackets before showing that equation in the app digitally.

Students are then able to select how they want to proceed with a few options made available on screen. Select the Show Solving Steps to be given guidance on how this can be worked out, stage by stage. This gives a host of options for solving the problem, which should help students learn how to work it out as well as different ways of thinking about the problem. This can be done in various ways, picking the method you want, such as using the elimination method, Cramer's rule, comparison method, and others.

An animated tutorial option is available as well as deeper explanations that provide more detail, but these are reserved for the Plus premium version of the app. A graph-based example option helps to visually show the problem in a different way.

What are the best Photomath features?

Photomath is super simple to use, allowing most students of a wide range of ages to take advantage of this help. As long as they have a camera-toting device and an internet connection, this can be something that works for them.

The app can be helpful for students at home but also makes for a great way to work through various solution options, as a group, in the classroom. Since it can be on each student's device it can make for an immersive way to work through solutions together.

The free steps are helpful as jump off points for teaching in the class, but for more in-depth explanations -- which can help solo learning -- the paid plan that offers greater detail would be a wise investment.

Having lots of options to pick from with explanations should, theoretically, help expand a student's understanding of the problem. Although since this can represent an easy way to skip ahead, this should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Usefully, this can work as a part of the Google app, so it is a tool of Google Lens. So this can be a super simple way to access math solutions and guidance from any phone, especially Android devices.

How much does Photomath cost?

Photomath offers a lot for free but also has premium features on a paid tier of the service that can be signed up to if wanted. The app is available on Android and iOS.

The free version gets you solutions for equations with the steps laid out clearly in a simple way. This also works for fractions, expressions, and functions. The app also comes with a calculator as part of the feature list.

The premium Plus plan, charged at $9.99 monthly or $69.99 annually, gets you extra options such as deeper solutions with richer explanations as well as solutions for many textbooks specifically. This also offer custom visual aids, plus more tips with how and why guidance.

Photomath best tips and tricks

Work as a group
Have the class work a math problem, then use the app together to go through the various ways it could have been solved correctly.

Add the depth
When the free app finishes, add deeper explanations to help students see the app isn't to be relied upon alone to learn or solve equations.

Place rules
Explain how the app could be used to cheat and why that won't help in the longer term when it comes to effective learning, helping student choose to use it helpfully only.

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IXL is an online platform designed for personalized learning experiences focused on skill development across a wide range of content areas and K-12 grade levels. Through a comprehensive suite of features, IXL focuses on targeting specific areas of development that students may need to further develop by using engaging video tutorials, games, and customized lessons. IXL offers flexible learning activities that can be used for whole class instruction, small group work, individual learning and tutoring.

For an overview of IXL, check out What is IXL and How Does It Work?

What follows is a sample lesson that could be used for high school algebra.

Subject: Mathematics

Topic: Algebra

Grade Band: High School

Learning Objective:

At the end of the lesson, students will be able to:

• Understand algebraic concepts
• Collaborate with peers
• Build individual algebraic skills

IXL Lesson Plan: Starter

Use one of the whole-class lessons within IXL to instruct students on the algebraic concepts that you want them to learn. Within IXL you will have the option to choose the grade level to target specific skills that align with your lesson’s learning objective(s).

As you review different examples as a class, students will get the chance to see the IXL platform and work through different problems together. A cool feature within IXL is “Group Jam'' that allows peers to work collaboratively to figure out correct answers to the questions posed.

Alternatively, you can put together a lesson using interactive slides through Slido, Google Slides, or any other similar edtech tool, and save the IXL engagement for the next phase of the lesson which is individual skill development.

Individual Skill Development

After the whole-class lesson, have students work individually within the IXL platform to ensure that they are working on the specific skills for which they personally need development.

Students will start with choosing their grade, for example 9th grade, and then the subject area, algebra 1. Then, more than 350 skills will be available but these are organized by broad topics such as numbers and operations, linear functions, quadratic equations, and so forth. The “Recommendations” option in IXL will use previous data to recommend activities to start with for students.

Within this 9th grade algebra 1 example, there are also 75 lessons and more than 300 videos, so students will have plenty of content from which to learn and enjoy. If students incorrectly respond to any question, a detailed explanation will appear that walks them through correcting it, as well as additional skill-building resources, including games, interactive worksheets, and teacher-created activities.

Student-Teacher Conference

IXL provides a robust suite of analytics for teachers to monitor students’ progress including how many questions answered, the time spent answering questions, what has been made in terms of skill development, and so much more. Graphics and charts are also available to show the progress by categories with score grids to see how every student in the class is doing on each specific skill, when compared to their peers.

Using these analytics, identify the areas of concern and share with students their progress, ask questions about their experience and areas of needs in their view, and discuss a plan for future development in individualized conferences. The other students can work on their skill development within the IXL platform while you meet individually with each student.

What Does IXL Offer for Test Preparation?

In addition to the individualized skill development lessons for mathematics, science, language arts, social studies, and spanish, IXL offers a wide range of test preparation content for several standardized test including: the ACT and SAT, which is used for college admissions; the GED to obtain the highschool completion equivalency; and state specific tests such as the Keystones, which is required in Pennsylvania.

What Community Features Does IXL Offer?

The IXL website offers regular posts to keep the community of IXL users connected. In addition, there are different awards and targeted activities throughout the year in which educators can get involved. An option to subscribe to the newsletter is available as well if you would prefer to get automated updates.

IXL is a great site to include in your lesson time for students to target specific skills that are personalized to their development. Give it a try and see how your students enjoy and learn with IXL.

• Top Edtech Lesson Plans
• What is IXL and How Does It Work?

Pi Day was first formally celebrated in 1988 at the San Francisco Exploratorium, when staff physicist Larry Shaw organized events around March 14, or 3/14, aka 3.14, which are the first three digits of pi (π), the mathematical constant that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. In 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives recognized it as an annual event, and since then, much like pi itself, has become a source of infinite joy.

These Pi Day lessons and activities are perfect for teaching your students about trigonometry, geometry, physics, cosmology, statistics, thermodynamics, and much more as pi appears in numerous formulae. So help yourself to a slice of pi here and enjoy!

Pi Day Lessons & Activities

Pi Day Challenge Games
A fun and quirky set of math/logic games that are slightly addictive. Practice with the 24 puzzles from 2025 or the archive dating back to 2017, while the Pi Day Challenge Team prepares the new 2026 problem set. Adding to the fun is the inclusion of ancient mythology, history, art, and ordinary circumstances, such as traffic jams and bread recipes. Create a free account or login with Google.

NYT Learning Network: Taxicab Geometry
What’s taxicab geometry, you may ask? Well it’s something along the lines of (sorry!) how an Etch-a-Sketch works—i.e., only vertical and horizontal moves are allowed. But it’s more complicated than that. And oh, by the way, pi equals 4 and circles aren’t round. Intrigued yet? This imaginative article dives into not only taxicab geometry but also related math topics. Questions and ideas for further exploration are provided. Free with no account required.

Pi-Search
Widely acknowledged to be completely useless for most purposes, Pi-Search is nonetheless absolutely required to fully celebrate Pi Day. The point of Pi-Search is simple: In less than one second, find any series of digits that occur in the first 200 million digits of Pi. A helpful odds table displays the likelihood that a series will be found, based on its length. For example, the eight-digit string commonly used to denote birthdays carries an 86% chance of being found within 200 million digits. What’s more, this humble (pi) site is packed with all kinds of other useless (and occasionally useful) information, such as how the search is actually performed and pi numeric trivia. Great fun.

Mensa for Kids: Pi Day Palooza!
Fine collection of Pi Day lessons and activities, including a homemade Spirograph, trivia, greeting cards, and even Pilish poetry. (If you’ve never tried writing in Pilish, you’re in for a keen challenge).

A Brief History of Pi (π)
Which has been around longer -- pie or pi? The answer may surprise you. Learn how ancient mathematicians deduced the concept and approximate value of pi in this article from San Francisco's Exploratorium museum.

14 Fun Pi Day Activities for High School Students
A lighthearted—yet academically challenging—collection of pi-related activities that incorporates music, language, poetry, art, statistics, history, American date abbreviations and more. For full appreciation of activity No. 3, “Throw a Pi-Themed Party,” students should watch Why is the area of a circle equal to π r² ? 2000 year old proof, but with pizza.

The Discovery That Transformed Pi
Before Isaac Newton transformed mathematics, the calculation of pi was laborious and slow. This entertaining, yet in-depth, video explains the principles underlying Newton’s elegant proof. And yes, there will be pizza.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Pi Challenges
Care for a bit of pi-in-the-sky thinking? Explore illustrated lessons that take pi out of Earth’s orbit in service of solving solar systems problems, such as the density of the asteroid Psyche and frost in lunar craters. A “stellar” collection.

Learn About Pi
A dynamic, illustrated explanation of pi that grabs the reader’s attention with its colorful, lively graphics which clearly demonstrate the properties of pi and how it can be used in calculating volumes of many two- and three-dimensional shapes. This webpage from PiDay.org would provide an excellent, clarifying accompaniment to the pi-related lessons included in this article.

Teach Pi
A plethora of pi activities, stories, music, lessons and trivia, TeachPi.org was founded by math educator and speaker Luke Anderson, whose enthusiasm for pi and numeracy cannot be contained. Be sure to check out Anderson’s alter ego, Pi Daddy, and his rap song, “Lose Yourself (In The Digits).” A super fun site to peruse.

PBS LearningMedia Pi-Related Resources
An abundance of K-12 pi-related lessons and interactives that includes calculating pi with darts, the square-wheeled tricycle, music from the Golden Ratio, and more fascinating topics. Lessons and activities are standards-aligned, shareable to Google Classroom, and include plenty of support material for teachers. And, yes, there will be pie. And pizza.

• Best Online Math Platforms for Education
• Best Sites & Apps for K-12 Education Games
• What Is Equatio and How Can I Use It To Teach Math and STEM?

BetterExplained is, as the name suggests, a concise way to learn math. This is done through online resources as well as downloadable content that can be printed.

Created by Princeton University graduate Kalid Azad, this platform offers a way to teach and learn otherwise complex and challenging mathematical techniques in a straightforward way.

Azad, a computer science graduate who has been tutoring math for years, said he loves finding the most clear and intuitive insights on seemingly complicated topics. In this he has done just that, and shares it with anyone who wishes to learn math.

The site comprises online article-style resources, PDF documents, and video-based offerings. There's more, without it becoming too overwhelming. 

This guide aims to clarify what you can get out of it all to see if this could be helpful in your classroom.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

What is BetterExplained?

BetterExplained is an online resource space that offers articles, PDF documents, videos, quizzes, slides, discussion topics, and more as ways to teach mathematical concepts.

BetterExplained is aimed at everyone, starting more simply and growing in complexity as it goes. So while most people could follow the first five or so lessons, you might need to have some knowledge of algebra to go beyond that.

The idea here is to not only show you how to do the math but, importantly, why it is done that way. It is described as teaching by which the overall picture is shown and it comes into clarity, rather than loading it in chunks that you have to hold in mind before getting to that final image for more understanding.

That should mean this can help students build a lasting and more intuitive understanding of calculus that goes beyond the specific formulas alone.

How does BetterExplained work?

BetterExplained offers plenty of articles on its website but also downloadable PDF lessons and videos. All of this is available without the need to sign-up or for any details to start using it right away.

While most of the resources mentioned are free, BetterExplained also offers more complex materials such as quizzes, slides, and video walkthroughs of lessons, but these come at a charged rate.

Students could be directed to the site, or specific concept articles, which they could work through on their own -- perhaps in preparation for a classroom lesson on the subject. Or these resources could be used in class to help illustrate points when beginning to teach a new concept.

Since everything is online, it all can be accessed by nearly any device, making it an easy one to share with students in class and beyond.

What are the best BetterExplained features?

BetterExplained is very easy to use with a clear -- if a little dated -- layout to all the information. Articles are broken down into sections such as Calculus, Computer Science, Essays, Advanced Math, Algebra, Math Essentials, Exponents and Logs, Geometry, and more. 

These are all laid out on a page so you can scroll and click into anything that seems useful -- ideal for browsing, but not perfect if you want to search for a specific lesson topic.

BetterExplained offers a Cheatsheet section that helps students learn in a way that is explained with more background and clarity. This offers sections such as Intuitive Learning under which lessons appear like "Analogies, useful even if wrong," "Math Intuition, start with the cat, not its DNA," and "Cartoons, simplify an idea to create a caricature."

The Colorized section is great as it lays out common formulas and breaks each down with explanations. It uses color in the formula that matches the words in the explanation so you can clearly see what is happening in the formula and how it can serve you.

A very helpful Calculus section offers multiple lessons to teach the subject, which can be viewed directly online or taken as a full course with videos and more.

How much does BetterExplained cost?

BetterExplained offers most of its resources for free but also offers a paid-for option that goes into more depth.

The Free resources include online course texts as well as all the various articles and resources related to explaining algebra.

Go for the Complete Course in calculus, at $99, and you get print-quality PDFs, video walkthroughs, per-lesson class discussions, slides, quizzes, and invitations to class webinars. 

BetterExplained best tips and tricks

Intro a concept
Use the resources to let students start on a new topic outside of class, using a link you send, so when they arrive at the lesson they understand some of the topic already.

Explain algebra
Use the colorized tool to explain key math formulas in a way that is engaging, fun, and clear before going into more depth.

Vary teaching styles
Use the Cheatsheet section as a way to get inspiration on different ways to teach and to think about communicating math concepts to students.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

Sal Khan isn’t surprised by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) math results for U.S. students, which were recently released and contained more pluses than minuses. 

“If I had made a guess, I would have probably gotten pretty close to what the PISA results are showing,” says Khan, founder of the free online learning platform Khan Academy. 

The PISA 2022 results, which are compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), paint a grim picture of math education with 15-year-old U.S. students seeing a 13-point drop from 2018, the last time the test was administered, and falling behind other industrialized countries. 

The U.S. held steady in reading and science, while among the 81 international school systems that participated in PISA, it rose from 29th in math achievement in 2018 to 26th in 2022, primarily due to other countries seeing an even greater slide. However, that was little comfort given the cold reality of U.S. math scores overall. 

Khan's takeaways from the test results are more nuanced – in both positive and negative ways – than some alarmist reactions to the results. 

PISA Scores Aren’t Entirely Fair to The U.S.  

Many headlines about the PISA scores portray the results as a disaster, and while it certainly is not good, Khan says the reality of the results are more complicated. 

“When people say, ‘Oh the U.S. is 26th [in math], how can that be, we spend so much money,’ I don't think it's completely fair to the U.S.,” says Khan. “If you truly compared us to large, diverse countries — diverse in every way, shape or form — we’re doing alright. And there are pockets in the U.S. that would be at the very top of that ranking. And when I say pockets, not even just individual schools or districts, I’m talking about the state of Massachusetts, which would be near the top of that ranking if it was an independent country.”

Still, There’s A Problem With Math Education in The U.S. and It’s Actually Bigger Than The PISA Results Show 

On the other hand, Khan believes the small gains or drops in PISA scores and questions about which country’s school systems did what in the pandemic distract from the larger long-term issues with math education in the U.S. 

“On some level, these tests that show like, ‘We've gone up or down by five points’ -- it's almost like the house is burning, and you realize that your sliding door is creaking,” Khan says. 

For instance, if you look closely at NAEP math test results, the story of the last few years is less dramatic, though the long-term trend remains disturbing. 

“Pre-pandemic, in Detroit 6% of kids were at grade level or above. Post-pandemic 3%,” Khan says. “ So one narrative is like ‘Oh the pandemic was horrible, it reduced the number of kids at grade level by 50%.’ But guess what, 94% were at grade level to begin with. That's the house burning part.”

Remedial Math is A Euphemism  

The state of U.S. math education becomes even more grim when considered in another way: The vast majority of college students have to take remedial math. 

“Remedial math is a euphemism for seventh-grade math,” Khan says. And of course, many of the students who go on to college are those students who do better overall in school. “These students go through these motions, they take 12-13 years of regular schooling. They’ve taken Algebra 1 and Algebra 2. Some have taken trig and calculus,” Khan says. But these lessons are not sticking. 

However, the good news is there are effective, evidence-based methods for teaching math. “I'm 100% sure that anyone who can learn how to read is capable of learning college algebra by the time they graduate college,” Khan says. 

Ways To Improve Math Scores 

One way that Khan says math scores can be improved is by having students use a learning platform such as Khan Academy a little bit every week. He knows that can sound self-serving but points out he doesn’t get paid more if more people take advantage of a nonprofit education platform. “If anything, I have to raise more money if more people use Khan Academy,” he says. He truly believes in its power to help students and has the data to back it up. 

“If students are able to put in even 30 to 60 minutes per week, 18 hours over a year, those students are accelerated something between 20% and 80%, depending on the grade level, depending on the study,” he says. “Broadly speaking, it's probably around 30%. In places like Khan Lab School and Khan World School, where the kids are doing 30 minutes per day, you're seeing two grade levels a year [acceleration].” 

Khan encourages educators and parents to take advantage of these resources as he formally believes doing so will add up to math success. He says, “If we had a world where students learned college algebra by the 12th grade, that one thing alone would be transformative.” 

• What Is Khanmigo? The GPT-4 Learning Tool Explained by Sal Khan
• What is Khan Academy Kids and How Can It Be Used for Teaching?

Are you ready to see the power of spreadsheets for mathematical, statistical, and scientific thinking? Let’s follow the path of using data to derive a mathematical model and then, using the model, to build an interactive simulation. A survey of 330 teachers found the No. 1 data analysis tool was – wait for it – Google Sheets! MS Excel was third.

Spreadsheets are the low-end of the computational food chain and can get your students started in relatively simple computations that can get really jacked-up if you want.

Google Sheets offers the big advantage of being free and allows for online collaborative efforts in the classroom and out-of-class projects.

Data - Large and Small 

Collect your own (first-hand, you are performing the measurements)

Collecting experimental data allows the introduction of simple measurement error analysis using centimeter rulers such as Investigating the Height of a Stack of Cookies (good first modeling activity with a “just-add-data” Excelet link). A good source of small real-world data sets (second-hand) is the Quantitative Environmental Learning Project (QELP) website. You can download data as an Excel file that can easily be converted to a GSheets file with no problem.

Exploring Error in Measurements

There are two major groups of errors, random and systematic (adds bias), and both can be built into spreadsheet simulations such as “just-add-data” spreadsheets.

So, how do you integrate error into a spreadsheet? Let’s examine an important measurement device, the ruler, using the Rulers and Measurement Error Excelet to explore the types of errors in a variety of ways.

Big data sets with scatter

Many scientific groups make data available for downloading, and some even make it easy. The file format, .csv (comma separated values as a text file), can be read by Sheets and Excel. Data on web pages that are column-separated can be saved as text files and read by spreadsheets. If you are going to have students download data, check it out first to see the results! It can be messy.

Sea Level Change (and other global problems) is a large collection of GSheets spreadsheets in which data from NASA, NOAA, and other sites have been downloaded and are ready for plotting (see the guides below). A large number of possible questions and tasks are included to aid instructors to modify to suit their classrooms. Dealing with big data with scatter is an important task that students need to get involved in handling it!

How to get started from scratch

Dealing with Data in Excel 2013/2016 - detailed handout for Excel (more about building later)

Dealing with Scientific Data in Google Sheets - Video instructions with an accompanying GSheets spreadsheets for hands-on practice

Mathematical Models and a Multivariable Approach

Deriving a mathematical model from data has become commonplace in math classes from middle school through college. These models, and so many science experiments, tend to be bivariate; however, in the real-world, things are multivariate plus measurements contain error. So our approach needs to deal with variation, which comes in the form of measurement error and the possibility of the variation or change in other variables that we think are constant. See the real-world function machine below.

Modeling

Do you need to teach linear regression? No, it’s just a line of best-fit. Goodness-of-fit, how good the linear regression fits the data, can be judged by the use of r-square and, as students turn to non-linear systems, the use of residues can be introduced. Novice students don’t see curvature in data especially if the r-square is near one. Converting from math, y = mx + b, to the actual variables, H = tn + e (for stacking cookies), is a task that needs lots of practice.

Just-add-data spreadsheets (pre-built with no writing spreadsheet formulae!!!)

These experiments contain a variety of interactive simulation and data pooling too:

• Cookies (pooling: form > sheet)
• Bricks (verify and revise)
• Unstacking pennies (x-intercept, check accuracy, pooling data)
• Nesting Styrofoam cups (an animated interesting model with y-intercept)
• Nested cubes (curvature, quadratic model)
• Tumor volume (peanut M&M’s, calipers, and measurement comparison)
• Discovering Pi & Its Measurement Variation

See What-if Spreadsheets for a wide variety of concepts in mathematics. These are pre-built spreadsheets available in both Excel and Sheets.

Simulations and What-if Questioning

Here is where more science process enters, as we ask the what-if questions that allow students to predict > test > analyze and then explain (yes, use words including math speak!). Students get to investigate how a variable influences the results by numerical experimentation.

Pre-built Interactive Spreadsheets (more than 265)

• Excelets (use forms tools, works on PC and Macs, and no VBA macros used) that include mathematical models, some probability models, many in science (chemistry, astronomy, materials science) and metrology (the science of measurement).
• Google Sheetslets are newer items, such as Roll the Climate Change Die (probability model) or Folding a Ribbon in Half: The Half-life Concept, many with accompanying activities.

Build Your Own Interactive Spreadsheets

• In GSheets, see Dealing with Scientific Data in Google Sheets. The second (cubic polynomial behavior) and third (radioactive decay) spreadsheets will offer directions with hands-on construction. Start simple, with just the yellow cell feed into a formula cell, and then add the bells and whistles! The use of check boxes as an on/off switch gets you into writing “if” statements.
• Here is an article with an Excel tutorial around developing some simulations in astronomy.
• If you want to build errors into a spreadsheet, see The Mechanics of Inducing Error in a Spreadsheet for adding random and systematic errors. For more on errors, see Investigating Types of Errors.

Online Collaboration

See our website, Data Pool in the Cloud, for examples and instructions to set up things in GSheets. The simplest thing to do is pool data for tasks. Gathering the data from groups or even individuals can be accomplished by simply sharing a spreadsheet with editing rights for students to enter the data or collect it via a Google Form. Now class statistics can be obtained and a class discussion can ensue. Discussions can be the whole class with the pooled data projected or set up groups and use the chat feature or comments placed on the spreadsheet in class, and yes it works! Want to play with one, try this - Collaborative Crowdsourcing Eye-ball Curve Fitting and, if someone else is there, open the chat.

Final Thoughts

Interactive spreadsheets bring an engaging pedagogy to the classroom that allows for numerical experimentation. These cover the complete pathway of data to mathematical models to simulations and allow error analysis to be introduced – and help students “get their think on!” Getting students into building simulations is not difficult.

Scott Sinex is a Professor Emeritus at Prince George's Community College in Maryland, where he taught chemistry for decades and served as the Department Chair of Physical Sciences & Engineering from 1995-2016. Learn more about his work and publications at https://sites.google.com/view/ssinex.

• HOTS for Teachers: Best Free Resources For Higher-Order Thinking Skills
• Best Free Virtual Labs
• Best Practices for Implementing STEM Resources

Desmos is the name synonymous with math graph-based teaching. This STEM-learning platform uses a web- and app-based platform to let students play with math in a way that creates visual results thanks to graphs.

Consequently, math can be taught in a way that moves beyond symbols and numbers to offer a graphical output, which can help make it all more accessible and engaging for a wider range of students.

Crucially, Desmos also helps take students from a basic understanding of graphs into far more complex possibilities. In fact, there is an annual Desmos competition that has entrants create complex and often beautiful artwork outputs using math to build the images in graph form.

What is Desmos?

Desmos is a graphic-based math tool that allows anyone to build advanced images using numbers and symbolic formations.

Desmos can be used as a STEM teaching tool to help students learn about equation plotting. It can also be used to teach how value adjustments lead to changes on the graphical outputs, helpfully using sliders to let students play around with this concept.

The use of colors and an unlimited number of mathematical expressions combines to create a tool that students can use to get really creative with. The end results can be complex and realistic drawings that can be saved to work on later or to share -- making it a viable in-class as well as homework tool.

How does Desmos work?

Desmos works as a web-based tool but can also be downloaded in app format to work on iOS and Android devices using touchscreen interfaces.

Students can join using a class code for instant access, or teachers can sign-up to create classes and activities. The Desmos Math 6-A1 curriculum is available to use both in English and Spanish and offers a year-long program of teaching.

Teachers can browse by activities to find suitable picks to use in class or to set as homework. These include marble-sliding games that have students transform periodic functions by trying to slide marbles through points on a graph.

Desmos can also be used as a four-function calculator, a scientific calculator, a matrix calculator, and a geometry tool. Using the Desmos Classroom it's possible to set work and take students or the class through programs of study to help them learn and develop their graphical mathematical abilities.

What are the best Desmos features?

The Desmos Art Contest is a really great feature that allows students to enter a competition in which their mathematical creations can win as the most creative way to use the tool effectively. Lots of fun while still helping to teach at the same time.

Desmos is a great way to teach modelling and data analysis as well as real-world mathematical applications. But at a more basic level it lets students graph equations in a way that provides instant results, making it empowering.

Students can also plot data points or explore transformations and analyze functions thanks to the easy way this STEM tool is designed. Solving equations is just a small part of the way this can help kids explore math in a fun and engaging way.

The ability to change graphs by manipulating the equations allows students to learn through play. This can also be done collaboratively to help develop social working abilities at the same time as math skills.

How much does Desmos cost?

Desmos is a free to use resource and doesn't require anything but a login from you in order to setup an account to get started. This allows you, as a teacher, to create classrooms and add students so you can monitor their work with ease. It also has no ads and no tracking, making this a safe environment for all ages.

Desmos best tips and tricks

Have a class competition
Use the image competition idea-only in class to see what everyone can create and award winners for the most original results.

Go the year
Try following the complete full-year Desmos Math 6-A1 course, in class and in spare time, to get a complete and rounded result.

Customize
Take pre-made activities and customize to make each one suited to the class or individual students to help them progress creatively.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

To share your feedback and ideas on this article, consider joining our Tech & Learning online community here

Legends of Learning is a game-based learning platform that offers curriculum-aligned challenges to help educate and entertain students.

Primarily focused on math and science games, this system is aimed at educating middle and elementary school students (grades K-8) and covers more than 350 learning objectives. This spans a mighty 2,000 games at time of publishing.

The company says that these educational STEM-related games can help improve student engagement, lesson comprehension, and test performances. Thanks to a backing of additional resources, this is more than just a collection of games and offers teacher specific support to help get the most out of everything available here.

What is Legends of Learning?

Legends of Learning may look like a games website but the reality is that this is a very engaging way of teaching math and science through standards-aligned task-based games.

The website comprises more than 2,000 STEM-related games that are helpfully arranged into categories including -- as a science sub-section -- earth a space science, life science, physical sciences, and more. These are arranged with age ranges to help further specify what students and teachers need when looking.

The games themselves are generally made up of an explorative part, in which a character is controlled, and test sections. In these parts there are challenges that require students to respond to a question or task, using science or math knowledge in order to progress further in the game.

How does Legends of Learning work?

Legends of Learning lets students and teachers explore the library of games by section and then under that category, by titles -- each offering a helpful description of the game, including a time of roughly how long it will take to complete.

Begin the game and it is very self-explanatory so most students of all ages and abilities can get going with this, largely without any assistance. That said, teachers are able to offer games such as Awakening, in which they can assign a focus on certain standards as needed to align with teaching goals.

Many games offer multiple choice questions to progress while others have interactive diagrams, memory games, simulations, and more. Usefully, students need to think and know what they're doing in order to make progress in the game -- many of which have characters that students can build up and want to return to and work on.

What are the best Legends of Learning features?

Legends of Learning offers genuinely engaging games that teach at the same time as entertaining -- helping students of all levels get engaged but also to want to return for more.

The alignment with learning standards is really impressive, with many covered including Common Core, NGSS standards, NGSSS, FL BEST, GSE, TEKS, SOL, TASS and plenty more.

Teachers can get feedback and see how students are progressing, or note areas in which they are struggling. Math Basecamp, for example, is a way to effectively complete worksheets at speed while the game character builds something for each correct answer -- allowing teachers to see how students progress, or don't, in varying areas. 

The playlist tool is helpful for teachers as it allows the grouping of games, videos, and assessments all in one place that can easily be shared with students or groups as needed. By tracking feedback here, teachers can modify content to make sure it's pushing individuals at the right pace for them.

Teachers can also run reports to see how students or classes are progressing -- although for the full experience here a premium account is needed.

How much does Legends of Learning cost?

Legends of Learning has a few pricing levels including a basic free account.

• Basic Teacher: This is free and allows up to three assignments as well as 2,000+ games with limited access, including to the Awakening game.
• Premium Teacher: Is $490 per year per teacher and this gets you unlimited assignments and unlimited gameplay.
• School: Costs $3,400 for up to 1,000 students -- with options for higher numbers -- and gets you all the above, plus Math Basecamp game.
• District: Is charged on a bespoke quote basis and gets complete access.

Legends of Learning best tips and tricks

Follow-up
After teaching a new topic, follow up with a game that tests learning and mastery for use in class or at home.

Reward
Use these games as a reward for work, allowing students to play while still learning and cementing understanding.

Build longevity
Create a leaderboard to show students how they're progressing and to keep them engaged in and returning to the games.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

To share your feedback and ideas on this article, consider joining our Tech & Learning online community here

During a recent Tech & Learning webinar hosted by Dr. Kecia Ray, South Carolina educators and DreamBox Learning representatives talked about how state resources in South Carolina, including funding for DreamBox, have helped fuel math achievement. 

"The first step to the longer journey before us is using the program and seeing the positive from those interactions," said Jennifer Wise, K-12 Mathematics Coordinator for Lexington School District Two. "It’s important to have benchmarks to say, ‘Ok, we’re here, what’s the next step?’"

Watch the full webinar here. 

Measuring Value-Added Growth 

Dr. Matthew Lavery, Director of Research of South Carolina’s Education Oversight Committee, said the state has moved toward measuring student growth in math to better encourage growth. “When we started to think about how to design our system so that it is inclined to produce proficiency, rather than having median growth or average growth be the comparison point when average growth doesn't really change much, we're using these progressively assigned targets that are designed to get students toward proficiency as the comparison point,” he said. “Hopefully, the system is now inclined to produce students on a pathway toward proficiency rather than producing the same straight lines year over year.” 

Prudent Pedagogy 

Before making DreamBox Learning tools available to every district in the state, South Carolina officials vetted the product and made sure it was research-backed and aligned with teaching practices in the state, said Odell Kennedy, South Carolina Sales Director for DreamBox Learning. “If you want to have long-term or sustainable gains, then it has to be predicated on prudent pedagogy instructional design that aligns to that pedagogy,” Kennedy said. 

Later, he added, “What makes us different is that we do not focus only on the answer a student provides. But we focus as much, if not more, on the thinking that led to that answer.”

Remembering The Why 

Wise said that in addition to utilizing state resources, successful math programs inspire students and remind them why math matters. “Why are we learning math? Yes, there's computational effectiveness, there's innovation and practice, but there's also a beauty and wonder,” she said. “Being able to provide opportunities and spaces for students to be able to tinker with math and become nimble and see it for so much more than just a computation – computations are valuable, but let’s see it as more.” 

Reducing Math Anxiety 

Math is one of the topics that creates a lot of anxiety but state and tech resources can help with that. “Not being very comfortable in math growing up myself, I can really relate to that,” said Lynn Carey, Assistant Superintendent for Instruction School District of Newberry County. “To me when the student is on a program such as DreamBox, it's non-threatening. It's just between them and the program. If they get an answer wrong, they're not embarrassed in front of their peers. It's a safe space. After Covid, and during Covid, there's just been so much anxiety, stress, and mental health [concerns] in children and adults, anything we can do to help minimize that, I think is a step in the right direction.” 

• Tech & Learning Webinars

The importance of productive failure, instant feedback, and mastery education in math education was discussed at a recent Tech & Learning webinar. 

The talk was hosted by Dr. Kecia ray and featured a lively discussion with Daniel Crispino, director of school leadership in Meriden Public Schools, and Daniel Tracy, senior solutions strategist at ST Math, a math education tool created by the nonprofit MIND Education.

Watch the full video of the webinar on-demand here. 

Key Takeaways

Process Over Product 

Crispino talked about how a few years ago Meriden Public Schools in Connecticut began rethinking its approach to math education to better understand how students were thinking and to encourage their productive struggle. 

The district focused on encouraging students to take risks, accept some setbacks, and still gain confidence and demonstrate perseverance. “This is a shift from when I learned when it was right, or it was wrong,” Crispino said. “We really wanted to emphasize that process over product, because we knew if we improved our processes, then our product eventually would improve, so that was really our focus.” 

These strategies have helped Meriden Public Schools increase math scores amid nationwide declines. 

Instantaneous Feedback and Degree of Error

Tracy said an important part of processes such as Meriden Public Schools went through is providing students with instant feedback that shows them their degree of error. He compared this to a game of basketball in which just missing a shot is not the same as an air ball -- traditional math lessons don’t do a good enough job of showing students when they just barely missed the correct answer. 

“The only difference between struggle and productive struggle is the story that the student is telling themselves,” Tracy said. “Do they believe they can do it? And the way you can get a kid to believe they can do it is if they see ‘Oh, I only missed it by a little bit. I almost made it.’” 

Instantaneous feedback in math education, like basketball, is important. “The faster we can have feedback, the more accurate the feedback, the more it displays the degree of error, the more likely the student is going to continue and persevere, and the learning takes place at a much more rapid pace,” Tracy said. 

Mastery and Differentiation 

Mastery and differentiation are also key. Math instruction in Meriden is student-driven and students have time to work on key concepts until these are mastered. “If they are struggling on something that was previously taught, they're always going to have additional opportunities throughout the year,” Crispino said. “Students are never just moving on to something else when they haven't grasped something previously.” 

ST Math is built around reshaping students’ understanding of success and failure in education. “The idea is can we lower the cost of failure to where the student perceives mastery as the most important thing, and it doesn't matter how long it took you to master it, as long as you mastered it,” Tracy said.

Seeing Into Students' Minds as They Learn Math 

Another key component of ST Math and Meriden Public Schools’ math education process is understanding how students are approaching their work on each math problem. “Instead of asking how you teach math, which is an adult-focused question, what we're asking is, 'How do you learn math and that actually gets you a wildly different outcome?'” Tracy said. “So our focus is how do you learn, and then apply that information to deep mathematical ideas.” 

Crispino said educators have put these ideas into practice in Meriden in a variety of ways. For example, students will work in groups and then discuss how they arrived at a solution to a math problem. “You can start to compare how students solved [a problem], which is really cool because there's a lot of different ways to get to an answer,” Crispino said. 

Crispino has multiple ways he can tell a math class is going well. “I want to see students collaborating, I want to see evidence [scrap] paper. I want to see people grinding through difficult math problems, and not just giving up," he said. 

In Meriden, this process is well underway, he said. "We've started to see it actually in front of our eyes, which is pretty powerful.” 

• Tech & Learning Webinars

Zearn is an online resource designed to teach math to students directly, one-on-one, as well as in groups. As such this is a platform that can be used by teachers in the classroom and for setting at-home work.

This is quite a stand-alone system if you need it to be. As such, teachers can set work to students and have them guided by a video teacher through tasks -- a useful way to free up more time for planning or one-on-one assistance in the classroom.

During the pandemic, the use of Zearn went up and it claims students who used it increased progress by 2.7 years in that relatively short time. This is thanks to curriculum-based learning that is designed for a variety of ages and abilities.

So is Zearn a useful tool for your school?

What is Zearn?

Zearn is an online-based math tuition tool for teaching students of varying ages about math. This is made by teachers and designed to be used by teachers.

Everything is helpfully arranged by grade level and is curriculum-based, allowing teachers to give students learning stages with effective practice to ensure mastery. 

Zearn is task-based but is also adaptive, so students can work their way through skills. It must be used in conjunction with teaching as this is more about working through tasks rather than being taught the concepts themselves.

Thanks to a teacher dashboard it is possible to track student progress and see which areas are causing struggle to help guide future teaching.

How does Zearn work?

Zearn can be setup for free by a teacher in order to get started right away. Students can then get invovled too, using this across a host of devices via the website.

Teachers should first teach the student or group the new mathematical technique which they wish for them to learn. Once they have this, it is then time to get onto Zearn to start practicing the process of that math skill.

When working on Zearn, students will be guided to help them progress independently of the teacher. Get something wrong and they can be given assistance or have choices lessened so as to help them toward the right answer -- while also understanding how they got to it. 

What are the best Zearn features?

Zearn is very easy to use since it is a follow-up to class-based teaching, making it useful for a range of ages and abilities. Since it's online it is also easy to access from many devices.

Everything is video led, so students can feel supported by the digital teacher as well as the "Zearn Squad" of students in the videos. They are then able to carry out tasks, feeling guided rather than this simply being an assessment tool.

Teachers are given a report that allows them to monitor and track student progress, specifically showing any areas which they may have got stuck on and need assistance with to progress. Everything is well scaffolded, allowing students to stay in their zones of proximal development.

The video teachers can help students complete paper-based worksheets as well as exit tickets as needed. Usefully, there is an independent practice that doubles as a formative assessment, ideal for measuring progress and subject mastery.

How much does Zearn cost?

Zearn is a not-for-profit organization. It is built by teachers for teachers and is totally free with no tracking or advertising. The website clearly states this is free and will always be available for free to teachers.

However, there are various accounts that can be paid for to add extra features. These are aimed at school and district use, while the teacher account offers all you could need to teach with, remains free.

School and district packages, charged at $2,500 per school, offer full access to Middle School pilot, the ability to create two student assignments, primary and bookmarked lessons, tailored foundational bookmark recommendations, access to detailed reports for each student, school-wide reports and district-wide reports, unit level assessments with rubrics, Clever and Classlink integrations, sharing between teachers, roster setup, extra support, training, and more.

Zearn best tips and tricks

Group teach
Have students who have mastered a concept teach that to those still learning, before they take on the Zearn challenges to cement that learning.

Go large
Use the whiteboard or screen to showcase the video materials to the class as a group, pausing to check understanding as you work through.

Assess early
Use the assessment tools to see how students are understanding new concepts before either moving on or focusing on trouble spots more clearly.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Digital Tools for Teachers

For many students, math and anxiety go hand-in-hand. According to a new study, this anxiety can hinder how students study math. 

In the study, researchers found that math-anxious students – even if they are good students overall – spend more time passively studying the textbook than engaging with real-world math problems, which is a better use of study time. 

This study confirms what Jeanette Nicholas, a math teacher at Belle Fourche Middle School in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, and many others have long known about the negative role anxiety can play in regard to math. With her students, Nicholas uses a variety of strategies to help students overcome their anxiety and form a more positive relationship with math. 

Inspire Students with Math Anxiety By Showing Them Success 

“They need to see success,” Nicholas says of students who are anxious about math. Nicholas teaches a supplementary math class that offers additional support. To build student confidence, she’ll often have them start off by solving types of problems for which they’ve already demonstrated proficiency. “So if the teacher’s starting a unit on fractions, and I know that she's going to be teaching some concepts like adding and subtracting unlike denominators, we'll go back and review adding fractions with like denominators.” Students then move on to tackle more difficult problems.

Technology can help with this process. Nicholas’ uses Get More Math, math practice software that lets students track their progress through a color-coded system. For example, when students revisit an old skill, the teaching tool reminds them of their previous mastery. As students learn new skills, they can see their progress, further boosting confidence and dispelling anxiety. “Even if they think, ‘I'm not very good at this,’ they suddenly realize, ‘Hey, I'm getting some points off it,’” Nicholas says. 

Correct Mistakes and Encourage Students Not to Label Themselves as Bad at Math 

In middle school, many students start to form lifelong associations with certain topics and can grow to hate math. “Usually by seventh grade, they know they're not good at math,” Nicholas says. However, encouraging them to try anyhow and providing them with those initial opportunities for simple success can encourage students to change their perceptions of their abilities. 

In addition, it’s important to give real-time feedback and chances to address mistakes. Nicholas favors math learning tools that have students correct the problems they got wrong. She also makes sure to offer extra help to struggling students and encourages peer mentoring as well. “It’s cool to see the students who know how to do that problem, they can help each other,” she says. 

Ultimately, for Nicholas, combatting math anxiety is all about building student self-confidence. With enough practice, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

• How to Help Students Develop Lifelong Math Skills
• How to Discuss Eco-Anxiety with Students

A new analysis of more than one million K-8 students across the U.S. found declines in math and reading among all students, with the sharpest declines seen for Black and Latino students. 

“When you look at the national trends, it's bleak,” says report author Kristen Huff, EdD, vice president of assessment and research at Curriculum Associates and a former senior fellow at the New York Regents Research Fund. “There are systemic reasons for these historical inequities, and now, they have not only been maintained but exacerbated.”

For the analysis, released on March 18, Huff looked at 2020-21 data in reading and math from Curriculum Associates’ i-Ready Diagnostics. She compared this data to historical trends to assess the impact of the pandemic on students.

The key takeaways are mostly negative, however, Huff says there are ways to help students recover from the learning loss we’re seeing.  

Overall declines in reading and math 

“The kids are not okay in reading,” Huff says. “If you look at our data, you will see that across all grades, one through eight, there is a decrease in the percent of students who are performing at grade level this winter. And that decrease is particularly acute in the early grades one, two, and three.” 

For example, the analysis found that the percentage of first grade students who were prepared to do grade-level work was 36 percent — a decrease of 10 percent when compared to the historical average. Second graders also experienced a 10 percent decrease against the historical average, while third graders saw a six percent decrease. Decreases for grades four through eight ranged from 4 percent to 1 percent. 

Huff says the data from grades one through three is particularly worrisome because kids are learning to read in these early grades. “This is when students benefit most greatly from direct instruction and phonics, phonemic awareness, and other foundational skills in reading,” she says. 

Math declines were similar. Only 36 percent of fourth graders were prepared to do grade level work, a decline of 16 percent compared to historical averages. Third grade saw 12 percent declines, while fifth grade saw 11 percent declines and declines in other grades ranged from 10 to 2 percent

“The biggest drop in math that we're seeing right now is in fourth grade,” Huff says. “What happens in fourth grade? Proportional reasoning, fractions. What is this? This is the basis of algebraic preparedness.” 

She adds students need to develop these skills because, “Algebra is the cliff where we lose students on their pathway to college and career readiness.” 

The Pandemic is Intensifying Existing Inequalities

“All of this bad news is especially bad when you disaggregate by race, ethnicity, or income,” Huff says. 

For instance, in schools composed of primarily Black and Latino students, the number of third graders not prepared to work at their grade level in math increased by 14 and 10 percent, respectively, compared to a five percent increase for the majority of schools with primarily white students. 

The data also shows that declines in reading and math are steepest in communities in which the median annual household income is below $50,000, and that students of color are more likely to be attending remote school than white students. 

As concerning as the report is, Huff offers optimism. 

“The ray of hope is that we actually know what needs to be done to help these students get on a path back toward grade level,” she says. “It's acceleration, not remediation, high-quality materials, coherence across the educational plan for the students. It's giving the students targeted help. ‘For today's lesson, Eric, we are going to be studying how to do mixed fractions. I know from data I have, that you are behind in these three prerequisites required to engage with today's lesson. So I'm going to give you a special homework assignment to help you get familiar with these concepts.’” 

High-quality tutoring and having clear actionable data is also key. “It's not a mystery, what we need to do,” Huff says. “Now there are funds, we just need to make sure the funds are distributed for interventions that we know work and to the students and communities who need it most.” 

She adds, “We hope to create a sense of urgency about how to use the resources at hand to create targeted interventions for students who need them the most.” 

• How Districts are Curbing Learning Loss During the Pandemic
• Addressing Learning Loss: Using Connected Assessments & LMS
• National Safe School Reopening Summit: What to Address

Who: Tara Fulton, District Math Coordinator at Crane Elementary School District No. 13, Yuma, Arizona 

In our school district, 100% of students receive free lunch and 16% are English language learners (ELLs). To support learning, all students have an iPad and all instructional staff have a MacBook Air and an iPad, which are the tools used in our mathematics classrooms.

After the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics were introduced, there was a shift in rigor, expecting teachers to teach math much differently. Rather than the teacher-centric “I do, we do, you do” approach, we began a journey to teach mathematics through problem-solving with the learner at the forefront, allowing skills and ideas to emerge from working through rich mathematical tasks. 

Our teachers had engaged in training on a problem-based model of learning, but it was difficult to find a freely available, problem-based math curricula that met our needs. We discovered that too many programs relied on the “Do-as-I-show-you” approach, leaving any focus on student reasoning and problem-solving to come only at the end of a lesson. Another issue was that open educational resources (OER) usually don’t provide enough teacher support to help make problem-based learning a reality in the classroom. 

To fill the gap, we created our own digital curriculum platform with materials curated from a variety of resources. While some teachers appreciated the autonomy in lesson design, many others wanted a more structured curriculum that they could teach lesson by lesson then add their own flair. 

Finding an OER solution 

We tried a freely available version of Illustrative Mathematics (IM) 6–8 Math offered by IM- certified partner Kendall Hunt. Our middle school teachers embraced the curriculum because of its predictable lesson structure and the embedded supports were effective in implementing a problem-based approach to mathematics in their own classrooms. Since the curriculum was so well-received, we wanted to offer that option to our K-5 teachers, too, so we signed up to pilot IM K–5 Math beta in our elementary schools. 

Pro Tips

Provide professional learning. To prepare for the curriculum rollout, teachers attended two days of professional learning. The goal was to provide a clear picture of how to make problem-based learning happen in classrooms because it’s very different from the traditional approach that many educators experienced as students themselves.

Teach math through problem-solving. Previously, the instructional model in many classrooms was “stand and deliver,” with the teacher doing most of the thinking and explaining. Now, the teacher is no longer the keeper of math knowledge but allows students to learn new mathematical content by figuring out problems using their own strategies and solutions or making sense of others. Our students explore, grapple with, and work through rich mathematical tasks. Teachers observe, listen in on conversations, ask probing questions to guide thinking, and facilitate discussions about mathematical structures and connections among mathematical ideas and relationships. This routine allows teachers to provide just-in-time support if needed, rather than just-in-case support which can take up valuable instructional time.  

Invite students to the math. One of the greatest things to see in our classrooms is teachers beginning each lesson with an invitation to the mathematics. That didn’t always happen before. Starting with an instructional routine like Notice and Wonder proves to be much more engaging and welcoming than asking students to begin copying notes for a lesson. Having an engaging invitation to the math gets kids excited. It captures their interest and shows them that math doesn’t have to be intimidating. It also builds a mathematical community in which students feel safe and their thoughts valued.

Increase equity and access. As much as we try to have equitable learning experiences for all students, our allowance for teacher autonomy in lesson design sometimes causes us to end up with inequities. For example, in a special education or ELL classroom, the teacher may focus primarily on rote skills and procedures with little attention to meaningful mathematics learning. While the teacher may think this helps students, in actuality, it removes their access to grade-level material and high-quality problem types. With our new curriculum, the focus is on equity and access so that all students can engage in rigorous grade-level content. As students respond to the math activities, teachers are able to uncover learning gaps and provide activities at an appropriate depth of knowledge that move towards mathematical proficiency. 

Implementing a consistent lesson structure. Each lesson in the curriculum includes an invitational warm-up, problem-based activity, activity synthesis, lesson synthesis, and cool-down. Having a consistent structure to every lesson is very helpful in a classroom setting — and during distance learning — because students know what to expect and how things flow. 

Give teachers the tools to be creative. As a 1:1 district, many of our teachers are Apple-certified and very creative in developing ways for students to share their mathematical understanding. Students might record and share a short video using Flipgrid or create a presentation using Keynote to summarize and synthesize their learning. It can look very different from classroom to classroom because of the technology resources teachers use and the variety of ways they can collect student artifacts. 

Positive Results

Creating mathematical connections. Coherence is important, too. When students see the mathematical connections among ideas and relationships or from one grade level to the next, they have better retention. They also have a smoother transition because they’ve already been exposed to the lesson structure and supports. When teachers see how well their incoming class is doing and say, “We need this curriculum for all our grades,” then I know things are working and changing for the better. 

Building lifelong learners. Since much of the work in our math classrooms is done collaboratively, students have the opportunity to construct viable arguments, critique the reasoning of others, work together, and come to consensus. They develop speaking and listening skills that tie in with our English language arts standards along with other necessary life skills that will be used in their educational careers and long after. 

Tech Tools

• Apple iPad 
• IM K–5 Math beta certified by Illustrative Mathematics 
• IM 6–8 Math certified by Illustrative Mathematics 

• Top Sites and Apps for Math During Remote Learning
• Best STEM Apps 2020

We are living in a data-saturated world. In fact, 90% of the world’s data has been produced in the past two years and the fastest-growing qualification for new jobs in the STEM field is data capabilities. 

Knowing how to make sense of graphs and ask questions of data is a capability that educators must help their students develop. And yet, the teachers I work with often lament about their students’ inabilities to draw conclusions, reason, and make sense of data. 

The good news is that it’s not too late (or too early, in this case) to start developing data literacy with your students. And the data talks approach might just be the way to develop these skills in your students in a way that works with the time constraints in your instructional schedule. 

How are we falling short in helping students become data literate? 

To start, oftentimes due to curriculum pacing and lack of instructional time, math teachers present data concepts in isolation and out of context. Therefore, instruction becomes very procedurally oriented.  

For example, students view the process of doing statistics as one in which they just have to follow the right steps to find the number in the graph that correctly answers the question. However, data is not just numbers in a graph; data is numbers in context. While students may become skilled at finding the right answers by learning a procedural method, they may not be able to really explain what the numbers mean. By providing students with a premade set of data and data visualizations (graphs, charts, etc.), we withhold from them the opportunity to think critically and do the intellectual reasoning of making sense of the data.

Sadly, teachers of STEM subjects can also do students a similar disservice. As a science teacher, I know that it's important for my students to plan and carry out scientific investigations that produce data, and then use data to make scientific claims. However, if I’m pressed for time, I might skip over the data analysis stage and simply provide the scientific explanation myself. By withholding this opportunity for students to compile and grapple with the data themselves, they are unlikely to develop a full understanding of the science concepts we are studying. 

Enter ... data talks 

A data talk is a discussion-based approach that takes best practices in teaching from both mathematics and science (i.e. implementing tasks that promote problem-solving and reasoning, establishing claims from evidence in science) and combines it all within a structure that is engaging and inviting. It allows the teacher the opportunity to integrate across both mathematics and science disciplines, which can help develop reasoning skills. 

A data talk begins by presenting students with a data visualization that they can relate to. The visualization should rely on their prior knowledge and tap into their curiosity. After giving students time to linger within the graph or data visual looking for patterns, the teacher then invites them to share what they notice and what they wonder about the data. 

The open nature of this invitation supports all students in believing their ideas are valuable. Doing this affirms learners’ identities, which is one of the NCTM’s five equity-based practices to support mathematics learning. So now, students are not only growing their critical thinking and reasoning skills, they are growing a positive identity as a mathematician, scientist, and STEM practitioner. Win-win-win! 

Finally, through rich academic discourse, students collectively grapple with the data to look for evidence to support their claims. The communication portion of the data talk allows students to boost their oral language skills. Students can use the academic vocabulary specific to the mathematics and science units of study while they develop their competencies in speaking and listening. 

All in all, within a data talk, you are addressing math, science, and literacy/language skills--a great way to teach multiple skills within one lesson, saving you instructional time while boosting your students’ data literacy power. 

This process can be summarized in four steps:

1. Questioning
2. Pattern seeking
3. Meaning making
4. Communication

The flow of this structure also supports what cognitive scientists recognize as the three steps in information processing: input, elaboration, application. 

Data talks can lead to scientific investigations 

I recently facilitated a data talk with a class of fourth graders who were in the middle of their science unit of study on weather. I presented students with a bar graph (above) showing the number of tornadoes occurring in Kansas each month for the past 70 years. Students quickly noticed that the most tornadoes occurred during the summer months (May-319, June-317, July-131). They also noticed that no tornadoes occurred in the winter months (December, January, and February).  

Many students wondered why there was such a difference in the number of tornadoes occurring at different times of the year. Some students inferred that the reason why tornadoes didn’t occur in the winter was because it was too cold for them to form. We then compared the bar graph of tornadoes by month to a graph showing the high temperatures by month. Students could see a clear correlation between the two graphs. The openness of this approach encouraged curiosity and motivated students to find answers to their questions. 

I told students that in order to test their claims, we would need to learn more about the conditions that were needed for a tornado to form (one of our science objectives for the unit of study). Next, students spent some time exploring the tornado simulation in the Discovery Education Science Techbook. Students explored by selecting different types of air masses to meet and observed whether or not a tornado was formed. 

What students discovered from the Techbook investigation validated their data-based claim. They found that warm, moist air rising through cold, dry air can create a funnel of fast moving air, and were able to conclude why the data showed no tornadoes occurring in Kansas during winter is because the air is too cold and dry for tornadoes to form. 

Through this short lesson students not only learned about an important science concept (how tornadoes form), but they also started to develop important dispositions that are helpful to a data scientist:

1. Approach data with a curious eye 
2. Always think carefully about the context of the data 

A simple structure to support complex thinking 

A data talk is a simple structure that can elicit complex thinking. Facilitating one is much like facilitating a number talk in mathematics, or the explore phase of a 5E model science lesson. Selecting the right data visualization might be the most challenging part for the teacher, but once you have the right one it will serve as the catalyst for rich student discourse. 

The beauty of the openness of the data talk is that it helps students see the process of data analysis as interesting and investigative. As economist Steve Levitt said, “Data science...opens up...ways for children to become the discoverers of knowledge, as opposed to the recipients of the brilliance of past generations.” 

To learn more about data talks and other ways to promote data literacy, check out: 

https://www.youcubed.org/resource/data-talks/

https://codap.concord.org/

Data Literacy 101: What can we actually claim from data Science Scope—February 2020 (Volume 43, Issue 6) Kristin Hunter-Thomson 

M. Ryan Foster is currently the Elementary Science Coordinator for Virginia Beach City Public Schools. In his 16 years in VBCPS, Ryan has also served as a fifth-grade teacher, Title 1 math specialist, and STEM camp administrator, and is a member of the Discovery Educator Network’s DEN Leadership Council.

• How to Build Remote STEM Engagement
• How to Teach Science Remotely

One of the biggest challenges facing teachers as they head back to school in the ‘new normal’ of remote learning environments is trying to make sure that students are getting a complete, well-rounded education. 

These websites, apps, and online resources (in alphabetical order) offer various curricula, lessons, games, and fun activities for building math skills.

ABCYA - A wonderful resource for educational games in a wide range of subjects including math.

AplusMath - Offers math games, worksheets, and flashcards in addition to a homework helper.

ClassPad - A new free online math tool that creates a digital scratch pad to solve any math problem, including graphing, statistics, and geometry.

Cookie - Lots of educational games for elementary students, with many designed for specific grades and skill levels.

DimensionU - One of my favorite sites/platforms for developing K-12 math skills in all areas, DimensionU uses cutting-edge technology in 3D games and esports in a safe, competitive environment.

Education Galaxy - An innovative online platform for grades K-6 that helps students achieve success in any number of core subjects including math.

Funbrain - One of the most popular educational gaming sites on the web, with activities divided by grade level.

Hypatia - An innovative equation editing tool that acts as a “spell check” for math and helps students solve problems.

iKnowIt - Offers math practice for K-5 students, plus teachers can create class rosters, assign lessons, and track student progress.

IXL - One of the most popular sites for math for grades K-8, including algebra and geometry.  In addition to tons of lessons, it features an educational portal for student tracking and reporting.

King of Math - An interesting, fast-paced iOS game for middle school math in which students answer questions and puzzles to level up characters.

Learn Math Facts - A free, flashcard-like iOS app for students looking to improve their math skills.

Lure of the Labyrinth - Pre-algebra students can go on an amazing adventure to rescue their lost pet and avoid monsters, solving math puzzles along the way. Aligned to state standards, this app offers a variety of lessons as well.

Math A Tube - Videos, worksheets, and explanations for all sorts of math skills and concepts (geometry, decimals, fractions, etc.).

Math and Sorcery - One of my favorite iOS games for learning basic Math skills by playing an old school 8bit style RPG.

Math Attax - An excellent two-player mobile (iOS/Google Play) game in which players try to shoot the correct answer before the other.

Math Castle - A super-fun iOS game for basic math skills that has players defend a castle from a dragon by solving equations.

Math Games - Just as it sounds: Math games for all ages, divided by age or subject.

Math Game Time - A terrific site for grades K-7 with plenty of free educational games, worksheets, and videos.

Math is Fun - All things math grades K-12, with more than just equations to solve.

Math Playground - Features math resources and activities such as word problems, games, worksheets, flashcards, and more.

Milestone Math - An interesting iOS app that uses self-paced learning to help students build their math skills.

Monsters vs. Fractions - A super fun game to learn fractions through game-based learning, plus an educational portal to track and monitor students.

Mystery Math Town - This is one of my favorite unique iOS apps for building math skills. Ideally this highly addictive adventure is for kids 6-12 and focuses on addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Students enter a town and try to unlock levels and characters by solving equations and finding variables.

Operation Math - A fun iPad app in which students K-8 focus on basic math skills (and some geography!) while trying to stop an evil villain from stealing numbers by solving equations and locking his escape route.

Polyup - A free site that uses game-based learning to help students grades 3-12 with math and computational skills.

Prodigy - An innovative math game for grades K-8 with real-time reporting.

RoomRecess -   Elementary students can learn basic math concepts through a wide variety of free educational games. 

Tailor-ED - Differentiate instruction and create a specific program with digital lessons to meet individual student needs. 

Zapzapmath - A quality site for math grades K-6, with an educational portal for tracking students and generating detailed reports.

David Kapuler is an educational consultant with more than 10 years of experience working in the K-12 environment. For more information about his work, contact him at dkapuler@gmail.com and read his blog at cyber-kap.blogspot.com.

While a single math textbook on algebra, geometry or elementary functions may provide a comprehensive look at its subject, it won't provide an individualized approach to the material. Nor will it respond in real time to students' difficulty with the material by providing an personalized step-wise method for solving problems. 

One way of keeping all students on track, regardless of math ability, is a math software solution that adjusts instruction according to student responses. Achieve3000  has released details about its individualized, research-based digital math learning solution. Achieve3000 Math covers standards-aligned math content, from basic elementary fluency and numeracy to core high school topics and provides differentiated practice and intervention that helps close students’ knowledge gaps and builds confidence.

Achieve3000 Math is aligned to the Quantile Framework from MetaMetrics. A third-party analysis of more the 800 middle school students in three states demonstrated a 7- to 9-point increase on spring test performance over that of students who were not using Achieve3000 Math. In the same study, educators noted that Achieve3000 Math is aligned to both State Standards and their own instructional math goals. 

Achieve3000 Math clearly helps identify students in need of intervention. Using a personalized instructional model, students advance step-by-step through dynamic math problems to find solutions. If they struggle, students receive scaffolded levels of support that break problems into manageable parts. Each student’s progress is tracked and updated for reporting, instruction planning, and assessment. Achieve3000 Math students also receive literacy supports, such as seeing word definitions and translating problems into the language of their choice. 

“While using Achieve3000 Math, students engage in productive struggle as they encounter increasingly difficult problems that are broken down into meaningful segments with appropriate hints provided on an as-need basis,” said Judy Brown, Vice President of Mathematics at Achieve3000. “Students are gently led through the productive struggle process to the correct answer and a more complete understanding of the skills and concepts.”

Achieve3000 Math integrates with Google Classroom and Canvas to support in school and at home learning and will be ready at the beginning of the 2020-21 school year.

With millions of educators and students involved in our great national remote learning experiment, companies are listening to teachers' feedback about how to improve their digital learning platforms. 

One such company, Curriculum Associates, has recently added new features to i-Ready to meet emerging educator needs during school closures and beyond. These features include a new instructional report for educators as well as new reading comprehension lessons for middle school students. Currently, the i-Ready program serves over eight million users nationwide and approximately 25 percent of all K–8 students across all 50 states. 

“We are always listening to our educators and working to improve our programs to meet their evolving needs, especially in challenging times like these with extended school closures,” said Rob Waldron, CEO of Curriculum Associates. “We expedited the launch of our new i-Ready features to further support our educators during remote teaching so they have all the resources needed to continue to deliver timely, data-driven, personalized learning in the most efficient way possible.” 

i-Ready’s new Personalized Instruction by Lesson report for classes and groups allows teachers to view student performance on recently completed lessons and status of lessons in progress. This simplifies grouping students by pinpointing those working at similar levels in a domain, as well as identifying where students are struggling, to help facilitate timely intervention. 

New reading comprehension lessons focused on connecting ideas in complex passages will also be added to i-Ready to engage middle school students in critical thinking. Lessons for Grade 6 are now available, and lessons for Grades 7 and 8 are coming soon. Additional i-Ready features and resources will also be available this summer to support student learning in the upcoming school year. 

i-Ready was recently recognized as a 2020 CODiE Award finalist by the Software & Information Industry Association. It was recognized in the Best Formative Student Assessment Solution category of the Education Technology awards for its ability to identify the learning gaps and standards students have not yet achieved and its ability to assess and help close those gaps to improve student achievement. 

In addition to the CODiE Awards, i-Ready was also recently recognized by the 2020 EdTech Awards as a finalist in the Personalized Learning Solution category. 

About i-Ready

i-Ready supports differentiated instruction for K–12 teachers and students, combining assessments and insights with individualized instruction in reading and mathematics. 

The Diagnostic provides educators with actionable criterion-referenced and normative data to create individualized lessons. Teachers administer the Diagnostic at the beginning of the school year to chart a course for their instruction and to personalize i‑Ready instructional paths. A midyear and end-of-year Diagnostic helps students and teachers measure growth and have data chats. Teacher-led and online instruction continues throughout the year to help students address their learning gaps and access grade-level learning.

To learn more about i-Ready, visit CurriculumAssociates.com/i-Ready.

Educators know that basic math is a critical building block that students need—not only to understand how things work in the world, but also to master all other STEM subjects. Yet many kids don't make a connection between math and their daily lives, or may believe incorrectly that "I'm not good at math."

Accelerate Learning's new core mathematics program, STEMscopes™ Math, aims to make math relevant to young learners by revealing the wonder of math in the everyday world. The math curriculum will be available nationwide in June for grades 3-5.  

Aligned to the Common Core State Standards, STEMscopes Math combines digital and print components with hands-on kits to help teachers to create math learning experiences for students. The digital curriculum materials for students are also available in Spanish. 

Using the 5E plus Intervention and Acceleration lesson model, STEMscopes Math  provides interactive learning with the Concrete Representational Abstract (CRA) approach. The curriculum features inquiry-based math investigations, virtual manipulatives and interactive games, and encourages exploration with open-ended tasks. 

STEMscopes Math includes benchmark assessments for grades 3-5 to provide standards-based data and Quantile measures that track student progress and inform instruction. It features embedded strategies for diverse learners, including English language learners and students who need additional support.

Can a teacher who is a technophobe learn to enjoy teaching with technology and even embrace distance learning? The answer is yes — and no one is more surprised than me. 

I have been a teacher for 33 years. I have had a phobia about using technology in the classroom for most of my career. Even today, I track students’ grades using pencil and paper. 

What this year has taught me is that I can actually “do” technology. Since our schools closed in March due to the COVID-19 emergency, I have an even greater appreciation for just how useful technology can be.

School At Home

On March 30th, our district launched a distance learning program called School At Home. Equity of access is our driving principle, so we offer both online learning opportunities and paper-based activities for students. 

In our rural district, not all families have technology or reliable internet access at home. I live several miles outside of town, and my internet connection is sketchy. So, most schools offer free internet access in the campus parking lot. A list of other wi-fi locations is also posted on the district website. 

As part of School At Home, every grade level posts a new Choice Board on the school website each week. Parents also have the Choice Board mailed to them. Each Choice Board, which is created by the teachers at that grade level, includes activities in math, reading/writing, science, and social studies. 

In fourth grade math, which is what I teach, students must complete four activities per week, and they are expected to turn in one of these activities to be graded. Since we had already covered all of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for fourth grade math before our school closed for spring break, we are now focusing on review. 

For the “no tech option” on the Choice Board, I offer paper-and-pencil activities. For example, to review a lesson on area and perimeter, I will ask students to: “Find the area and perimeter of your living room, bedroom, and bathroom. Draw it out on a piece of paper and label it.” Students cover the same math topics whether they are doing activities on paper or online. 

For the technology option, I use STEMscopes Math, which our school started using this school year. Initially, I wasn’t excited about having an online math curriculum but my colleague, a third grade teacher, asked me to take a look at it and I was surprised by how easy it was to use. I also like that I can pick and choose the parts of math lessons I want, and that they are aligned to our state standards. Students now log into the program from home and I can immediately see who has done the work and how they did, which is very helpful. 

Here are a few other things I have learned since we moved to distance learning: 

• It’s never too late to learn to love technology.
  Before this school year, I had never used an online math program. Before the COVID-19 emergency, I had never used or even heard of Zoom. Now, I am thankful the district has provided us with these resources to help students continue their learning. They have been lifesavers.
  
• Be flexible
  The first day of School At Home was a doozy. I got my first call from a student at 7:30 a.m. and my last call from a parent at 10:30 p.m. The second day was better, and I made it through the week. We have daily office hours, but I prefer to respond right away. If students need help, they can email, text, or call me anytime. If they don’t turn in an assignment, I’ll reach out to see if they need help. If they want to talk about things that aren’t school-related, that’s fine, too.
  
• Don’t stress about the small stuff.
  Before, I would stress about students not turning in an assignment. Since we moved to distance learning, I have to remind myself that some children do not have the same level of direction or support at home that they do in the classroom. This experience has helped me become more understanding. 
  
• Check in.
  The other fourth grade teachers and I use Zoom once a week to meet with students. It’s not mandatory, so about half of our students usually attend. They are so excited to talk with us and their friends! This gives us another opportunity to check in and ask if they need help with anything. 
  
• Don’t give up
  So far, my biggest obstacle has been coming up with ways to get through to students who aren’t doing the work. In our district, paraprofessionals help call students every week to encourage them to turn in their assignments. I reach out as well, but it doesn’t always work. If students don’t have someone at home to motivate them, it takes a toll on their learning. Even so, we’re continually trying to find new ways to get students engaged.

This whole experience has made me appreciate technology so much more, and I’m grateful that our school and district have been so supportive. If they weren’t, this would be much harder to do. 

Our students face many variables that are out of their control and that can limit what is required for learning. Even with the challenges, it is rewarding to see how excited students are to learn. That shows us that we’re doing good things for them because they love school that much. 

Tana Schilling is a fourth grade teacher at Llano Elementary School, a Title I school that enrolls approximately 450 students in grades preK-5. It is part of Llano Independent School District, a rural district in Texas that encompasses two elementary schools, a junior high, and a high school.

Happy Numbers

Carefully scaffolded lessons build a strong math foundation

Pros: Scaffolding creates seamless connections from concrete models to the abstract.

Cons: Scores for growth and progress are shown, but it's missing student responses that could aid in identifying misconceptions.

Bottom Line: Depth of concepts covered and expertly paced lessons are sure to develop mathematical thinkers.

Read more.

Site of the Week picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed byCommon Sense Education, which helps educators find the best edtech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

By Common Sense Education

Who: Susan Dalka, K-6 Math Coach

Where: Thomaston Public Schools, Thomaston, Connecticut

Connecticut uses Smarter Balanced assessment for the annual state testing as it aligns with our state standards. 

We had previously used another assessment program to measure growth and prepare students for the state tests. Although it gave us a data point, the information was not being utilized very well other than as a rough benchmark. We felt that we needed more than just content; we needed math practices, such as problem-solving and reasoning because these skills are part of what is assessed on the state tests and are critical for success in the 21st century. We needed a program that would support instruction, learning, and readiness for those math practices on the state assessment, and we wanted a program that would engage students in developing those skills collaboratively.

We chose Ready Classroom Mathematics as our core math program because it supports our teachers and students in learning these skills. We use i-Ready Assessment to provide ongoing and actionable data to teachers to impact instruction. Students are also using the digital tools that go with Ready Classroom Mathematics. The diagnostic suggests specific, teacher-taught lessons. We didn’t add the adaptive math piece because we wanted students to engage in the classroom discourse part of the program. We may add that down the road, but right now we want our students to learn how to strategize and work collaboratively.

The instructional routine of Ready Classroom Mathematics is focused on problem-solving and discourse. We ask students to try to problem solve with a range of different strategies and to talk about what they’re doing as they develop math skills and critical thinking. For us, this was the best way for students to learn these necessary skills.

Early Results Show Positive Student Outcomes

This is our first year with the full package of tools and technology in our math program. However, while we were ramping up last year, we saw early progress in Smarter Balanced Assessment scores compared to previous years. Each student has a target growth goal for the year. In past years, our growth goal hovered around 62% of our growth target, which is the state average. But last year, we achieved 67.7% of our growth goal target at the elementary level. Those five points are important to us. It is evidence that we’re moving in the right direction. 

Data from the i-Ready diagnostic this year shows that at mid-year, 26% of our K–5 students have already met their end-of-year growth goal. Six percent have made their stretch goal, which is significant as this goal closed achievement gaps and students have the remainder of the school year to meet their target and stretch goals. 

Our teachers are thrilled to have data that is directly linked to what they’re teaching and that they can easily understand. Even though it is a shift from the way we were teaching before, our new programs seem more teacher- and student-friendly. Teachers also feel more supported in helping students reach new levels of learning. 

Our intention was to shift our instructional practice to better help our students meet the full demands of the math standards and prepare them for their future. We aligned our math instruction and assessments with the state assessment that also addresses those same standards and skills.

It is exciting to see our new problem-solving math strategy having such a positive impact on our students.

Technology Used

•  Ready Classroom Mathematics 
•  i-Ready Assessment 

CyberChase Shape Quest!

AR adds unique twist to geometry, spatial reasoning games

Pros: Leveling and strategic clues help the games appeal to students with a wider skill set.

Cons: Maneuvering the device over the game board can be difficult and awkward.

Bottom Line: Once kids get a hang of things, this app's puzzles will get them thinking creatively about shapes and spatial reasoning.

Read more 

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

By Common Sense Education

MIND Research Institute today announced the launch of an all-new version of its flagship solution, ST Math®. 

Based on 20 years of neuroscientific research, ST Math uses spatial-temporal games to present math concepts visually for students in grades preK–8. 

The mastery-based and standards-aligned ST Math offers challenging puzzles, non-routine problem solving, and informative feedback. Independent education research firm WestEd recently published a study evaluating a math edtech program on multiple state assessments. The 239 schools that used ST Math consistently outgrew similar schools in statewide rank by an average of 14 percentile points.

The newest version is built on the latest website technology, featuring responsive design to work on any device. The update gives ST Math’s mascot, JiJi, and all the puzzles and environments a fresh look and allows students to track their logins, minutes played, and puzzles solved each week.

For administrators, ST Math now has more streamlined implementation focused on single sign-on and account provisioning, as well as new reporting tools that offer comprehensive student data to uncover insights and track student learning results.

Improvements for teachers will help them implement the program with greater fidelity, integrate it with core curriculum more easily, and better support student learning. Key features for teachers in the new version include:

• A simplified user experience
• A new assignments feature, allowing teachers to assign any ST Math objective to individual students, groups, or the whole class outside of their journey
• Redesigned progress reports and student detail information to more clearly present actionable data for informed instruction
• The ability to see the progress of minutes played and puzzles completed during the current week, or as a median of all weeks to track engagement
• The ability to view a student’s entire history of usage and progress toward standards and objectives, as well as clear alerts for struggling students.

To learn more about the new version of ST Math, which is available for the 2020-2021 academic year, go to http://www.stmath.com/whats-new. 

The latest update to Maplesoft’s Maple Companion app can not only help math students solve a wide assortment of problems and equations on their own but can free the teacher to concentrate on working with students who need assistance or enrichment. The app can help visualize and work through a variety of equations, from integrals and matrices to systems of equations and differentials, all by snapping a photo of the problem, either from a textbook, the blackboard or a homework assignment. It’s free and runs on iOS (iPhones or iPads) as well as Android phones and tablets.

Welcome to School Tools. This daily blog is a vital addition to Tech & Learning that will highlight, examine and explain the newest and most important educational technologies. From notebooks, tablets and projectors to apps, online curriculum and Web services, look for School Tools to tell you about the latest in educational technology as well as what works, what doesn’t and what deserves to be in the classroom.

By scouring the Ed Tech landscape, we intend to bring you the most interesting and innovative products for the classroom and presenting them in plain English.  Most days you’ll find descriptions of cutting-edge teaching technologies and once a week there will be an in-depth review of a key classroom product. We intend to get personal and be your stand-in for making these key classroom buying decisions. Our goal is to become nothing short of fostering a better classroom experience for teacher and student. 

Calling, Calculus Tutor

Pearson Aida Calculus

Getting help to confused calculus students may be no more than a phone away with Pearson’s Aida Calculus app. By mixing traditional math education with a heavy dose of artificial intelligence Aida creates a personalized approach to the material. The app, which works with iPhones and iPads, but not Android phones and tablets, includes helpful videos, offers positive feedback on what students did correctly and helpful tips when students are stumped. It’s free to use until the end of 2019.

First in Math

Pros: Games lack the "drill-and-kill" feeling; with so many games and levels, players can’t get bored.

Cons: Some games require a bit more instruction, especially for younger kids.

Bottom Line: Nothing frilly: First in Math is 100% solid math practice through and through.

Read more 

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

By Common Sense Education

Mathletics

Content-rich math program that covers it all, from K to 12

Pros: The right blend of text, video, and interactives to build strong skills.

Cons: Questions are a bit rote and aren't adaptive to student responses.

Bottom Line: A wealth of mathematics instructional material with useful reporting features.

Read more 

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

By Common Sense Education

Virtual Nerd

Flip a classroom with these free video math tutorials

Pros: Tutorials are high-quality and easy to follow; they cover a wide range of math topics.

Cons: Learning can be repetitive as all videos follow the same format; there's no active engagement for students.

Bottom Line: High-quality but monotonous math tutorials can be a good classroom supplement.

Read more 

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

By Common Sense Education

To help New York students meet the New York State Next Generation Learning Standards for both English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics, Curriculum Associates has developed the Ready New York, Next Generation Learning Standards Edition. 

The Ready New York, NGLS Edition is based on Curriculum Associates’ Ready program, which is currently used by nearly 250 districts across New York State. 

Aligned to the Next Generation ELA Learning Standard, Ready New York, NGLS Edition for ELA  includes 31 new, engaging, and complex texts from a range of genres featuring diverse cultures and backgrounds. Each lesson encourages integration of reading, writing, thinking, and speaking skills and teaches students how to use the academic vocabulary of the standard to facilitate discussion. 

The printed Teacher Resource Book provides point-of-use strategies, instructional routine support, and built-in differentiation for teaching, as well as extra supports for meeting the needs of English Learners. The online Teacher Toolbox additionally provides  research-based, standards-aligned resources to support on-level and differentiated instruction, as well as multimedia content and activities.

Ready New York, NGLS Edition for Mathematics provides complete coverage of the new Next Generation Learning Mathematics Standards. Lessons in the Student Instruction Book embed Standards for Mathematical Practice and provide students with instruction using the Think–Share–Compare routine. The Practice and Problem Solving Book also provides a Family Letter for every lesson to help parents or caregivers understand the content and participate in the lesson activity. 

The printed Teacher Resource Book for Mathematics includes resources for teaching each lesson, embedded language routines, suggestions for scaffolding language used in mathematics and an array of assessment tools to help monitor student progress. The online Teacher Toolbox provides access to detailed lesson plans and digital tutorials for students performing on, below, or above grade level. Teachers also have access to additional K–8 resources including mathematics lessons, Tools for Instruction, Interactive Whiteboard Lessons, and presentation slides.