If you are looking for real life applications, puzzles, interdisciplinary connections and creative interactions to be a part of your student’s math learning experience, you need to take some time to look at Mathigon.org. Mathigon is a site that provides your students an engaging opportunity to explore and discover math.
They provide a course library of lessons focusing on various grade bands: Grades 6-8, Grades 9-10, and Grades 11-12. These are lessons that will guide the students through the content. Some of it is still being constructed but there are some great ones to begin with.
The Polypad is a wonderful math playground for your students. They are able to work through several types of problems using the various tile options as a mental workspace. These can be used in conjunction with problems that you are providing them outside of the website. It could also be used to project digital manipulatives to your interactive board for instructional purposes.
The following are screenshots of some of the options available:
In addition to the Courses and Polypad, Mathigon has pre-built Activities that are ready to be used. They cover a variety of age groups and concepts. The only problem is that you will probably spend more time than you plan because you are enjoying them just as much as your students.
Mathigon is a free resource that allows you to create classes that you can invite your students to with a class code or by importing from Google Classroom. Once they have joined the class, the exciting world of mathematics will take on a new experience for them. This is definitely a tool that should be explored!
