TinaMo's Math Realm

As I read through chapter 6, I was reminded of one of my favorite things to do with PowerPoint – using hyperlinks to create interactive tutorials or quizzes. With a little extra time spent planning a PowerPoint, you can create buttons to represent multiple choice answers for a quiz or create a tutorial that gives immediate feedback to the user letting them know if they have chosen a correct answer or not. I also enjoy creating short timed quizzes for my math students. I include all of the instructions within the PowerPoint as well as the fact that they will have 2 minutes per question or 5 minutes to do a multi-step problem and then let the PowerPoint do all of the work for me by using rehearsed timings. I usually make the 1st slide with a warning stating that a quiz will begin at the tardy bell. This is a great way to get the students settled in quickly. I have also created Jeopardy simulations. I split the class into 3 or 4 small groups and play “Team Jeopardy”. This also requires th...

Academic software is readily available to most all math classes in the form of tutorials and drill-and-practice. The high school math departments across Texas purchased new textbooks in the 2007–2008 school year. I was allowed to preview textbooks that had been adopted by the Texas Education Agency and was amazed by the amount of digital resources available with each textbook. I am currently using a Houghton Mifflin precalculus book for example. It has a free companion web site available to all students found at http://college.cengage.com/mathematics/larson/precalculus_limits/1e/student_home.html that has a general resources link containing note-taking pages for every section of every chapter in the textbook that students can use to follow along with my lectures and/or the textbook to help them summarize the section. Another useful tool found under the general resources link is the math graphs link. This link allows you to print graphs that are contained in the exercises so that you c...