Would You Rather - Quick and Fun Math Lessons - Free Technology For Teachers

Last month I shared a list of math lesson resources for middle school and high school teachers. At the end of the post I invited you to email me with suggestions for more resources. Jamie Rykse recently took me up on that and emailed me a great set of resources. Two of the items that jumped out at me from Jamie’s list were blogs called Would You Rather? and Estimation 180.

Would You Rather? presents a picture with a mathematics problem that asks “would you rather?” The questions that I looked through all had a financial aspect to them. One of my favorite examples from Would You Rather? is this November 7th entry that asks “would you rather buy unleaded gasoline at $3.49 per gallon with cash or at $3.59 per gallon with a credit card that gives 3% cash back?”

Estimation 180 contains 180 pictures that contain a prompt to estimate something like height, quantity, or volume.

Applications for Education
In my email to Jamie I mentioned that Would You Rather? is a resource that I could see myself using in an Intro to Personal Finances course. Would You Rather? provides a great context for math lessons that students can relate to.

Jamie’s email to me contained some other resources that I’ve included below as he described them to me.

Visual Patterns: http://www.visualpatterns.org/ by Fawn Nguyen

Her post explaining the site: http://fawnnguyen.com/2012/12/27/introducing-a-new-site-visual-patterns.aspx
Students are given a visual pattern, draw the next one in the series then figure out how many objects in the 43rd step, find equation for the pattern.

Math Munch http://mathmunch.org/ by Anna Weltman, Justin Lanier, and Paul Salomon

On the “For Teachers” page, the “Why Math Munch” gives an overview. Also includes link to a Tedx Talk they did. Favorite quote: “We write Math Munch to help more kids find something mathematical that they love.”
I had the opportunity to room with Justin at Twitter Math Camp ’13 and got to see first hand his passion behind the above quote.
How Fawn Nguyen uses Math Munch in the classroom: http://fawnnguyen.com/2013/09/04/20130903.aspx
Really, if you are a middle school math teacher you must follow her.

Common Core Problem Based Curriculum Maps http://emergentmath.com/my-problem-based-curriculum-maps/ by Geoff Krall

He has pulled together tasks and problems from others like fellow math bloggers and sites like the mathematics assessment project (a resource onto its own http://map.mathshell.org/materials/index.php)
He created curriculum maps for grades 5 to Algebra 2 using those resources that you can use and modify to fit your needs.

All of these resources are from my limited participation in the Math Twitter Blogosphere (http://mathtwitterblogosphere.weebly.com/) #MTBoS. If I were to meet a new math teacher, I would point them there and say participate as much or as little as you can handle. Be prepared for a fire hose of resources and many very kind math teachers putting themselves out there and sharing what they do. I would also encourage them to participate in a Global Math Department session (https://www.bigmarker.com/communities/GlobalMathDept/about).

Would You Rather – Quick and Fun Math Lessons

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