For context, I’m a first year teacher and my degree is in secondary biology ed. But, I got hired this year a few days before school started as a long term sub for junior high and high school math. I am the ONLY math teacher in the building- and I’m not even a real math teacher!! our other math teacher is out on parental leave and our secretary is subbing for his classes because we’re so short on subs. Needless to say, I need some help!!
My Algebra 1 curriculum is Illustrative Mathematics and I do not like it. I find the pacing and order of the units to be weird, it’s really difficult to do differentiated instruction with, so many word problems which is hard because half my kids are ESL. We just limped through the first unit but I need some different ideas for the up and coming units. How are people making this work? Any good extra resources anyone has? The teacher before me had purchased the whole All Things Algebra Curriculum from TPT which I really like, but it doesn’t align super well with the IM Curriculum, and I don’t want to throw my students off track for next year obviously. Any advice from teachers who actually know what they’re doing?

I am using my mentors teachers lessons, which are mainly a handout every day that she does with the class. She goes over the whole handout for the entire period, where students try some problems here and there. I have been copying her style but I am not sure if I like it well. The one thing I find efficient is graphs and shapes are printed on handouts.

Do you use some form of guided notes? Or do you have students write notes in notebooks?

My school is looking to offer alternative math electives at the HS level. As of right now, kids are fairly limited in what math courses they can take unless they’re accelerated and have more options for college credit classes. We would like to create some electives for kids that might not necessarily want/need college credits. Does anyone have any ideas of interesting electives that students might be able to take?

I was wondering if anyone can recommend me a book that carries curriculum based practice questions. My daughter is a freshman and taking geometry hons. She struggled a bit in the beginning but is catching up. One thing she is looking for is more practice questions but we aren't finding any books that follow the curriculum being taught in school, we are in MA. Any recommendations? Thanks!

I am a teacher in Texas and have been teaching 8th grade Algebra for 15 years. Recently I started developing game and puzzle apps and decided to actually make something math related that my own students could play to practice skills but in a fun way.
Enter 'AlgeBrigade220,' a collection of games that follows you as you captain The Daniel through adventures in space. Currently there are 4 games:
Critical Relay: Use slope to connect to relay stations in space back to Fleet Command.
Sentrimetry: Launch debris into a hidden system of linear inequalities, trying to find the Sentry at the intersection of the boundary lines.
Fuel Factory: Process fuel cells(A=1 quadratic trinomials) by matching cells with matching factors.
TrajectOre: Launch Ophirium from your location to an ally rover using quadratic function vertex form by entering vertex values and calculating (or guessing) the A-value associated with your position and vertex.

If you are a teacher, or have children learning these subjects, please give this a try.
I am open to feedback, criticism and suggestions for other games.

Do you as a HS math teacher feel like other subjects are kind of let off loosely, other than English? I mean if feel like our entire school and district has been strongly rated on standardized test scores which includes math and English. If the school scores badly, that's all on the math or English teachers. This is not the on the other subject teachers but did any of you move on because of this? I feel lately it's been more about field trips, students are now gone about 15 days a year. In additional to other legitimate absences, it makes it seem like they are not in class very often and yet we are supposed to make these kids score superstar level on standardized tests. I feel like these last minute field trips or sporting events cause students to miss out and I have revamp lessons and reteach. Maybe I'm just in the wrong school or district.

Hi everyone,

I'm a dad who wanted a simple, fun math game to play with my 6-year-old. It reminded me of school, when our teacher printed out Battleship sheets to help us learn multiplication. Math you actually wanted to play.

Most of the games we found were full of ads, paywalls and logins, so I built my own. It's called BattleMath.

How it works: it's Battleship, but every shot is a math problem. Answer correctly and your shot lands, get it wrong and the turn passes. It covers addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, with adjustable difficulty, and you can play against the computer or a friend/classmate via a private link.

• Free, no ads, no accounts, no sign-up • Runs in the browser (Chromebooks, tablets, phones) • Doesn't ask for names or emails • Share to Google Classroom in one click: https://battlemath.app/teachers

Try it: https://battlemath.app/?utm_source=teacher-group

We play it almost every day at home, and the point is simply to have fun while learning. I'm not trying to make money from it, and I'm keeping the running costs low so more people can enjoy it.

What I'd really like is your feedback: what would make this more useful in your classroom? I plan to keep adding things, but mainly based on what teachers and kids ask for.

Thank you for reading!

P.S. Disclaimer: English isn't my first language, so an AI helped me write this post. If it sounds suspiciously polished, that's why. Any typos that slipped through are 100% mine, and I'd like all the credit for those. 😄

I have completed my BTech in Electronics and Instrumentation. I am an analytics and data science professional. I have experience in teaching students from grade 8 to 12.

I make Clean Slate, a free online whiteboard for teaching (no paid plan, no ads). I posted it here last week and a lot of you opened the demo, so thank you. The clear lesson for me was that a blank demo board doesn't show what it's like in a real lesson. So the demo now starts with an actual lesson, and you can run a pretend class on it:

https://whiteboard-app-beta.vercel.app/demo?start=class

It opens a solving linear equations lesson with the worksheet beside the board. Press Try a live class and five pretend students join and start solving 2x + 3 = 11, each on their own board. Ben makes a mistake. Open his board, pin a comment where he went wrong, and watch him fix it. It takes about two minutes.

New in a live class since last week:

- Class overview: every student's board on one screen, live, with a tick when they're done.
- Hands up: students can ask for help, and raised hands go to the top of your list.
- Pens down pauses every student's board and brings them to yours.
- Send my board puts your question on every student's board. Only you can rub out what you sent.
- Show to class puts one student's working on every screen, with or without their name.
- Save boards makes a PDF of everyone's work before you end the class.
- Students now get the full toolbar on their own board, not just a pen.

Students still join with a 6-character code and a first name. No accounts, no emails.

What it doesn't do: no video or audio (run it beside Zoom or Meet, or in the room on tablets or laptops), no offline mode, and it's made for laptops and tablets rather than phones.

If you try the pretend class: what would you need before you'd use it with a real class?

More about the class features: https://whiteboard-app-landing.vercel.app/online-whiteboard-for-classroom

My school currently uses Math in Focus (Singapore Math) but it really doesn't help the students, or work with common core standards that our school uses.

The board basically saw Singapore in the title and dove straight in. After some lobbying, they are giving us the opportunity to recommend a new curriculum for k-7. I'm doing some research and currently my top contender is I-ready.

Some things to consider, it's an international school so needs to be ELL friendly. While we do use technology, we want to keep most things off devices.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Hi everyone! I came here for advice: I’ve been in public school system overseas (horrible), so I switched to tutoring, EdTech, curriculum development and teachers training , middle and high school, and was working like that since 2018. Now I am in Massachusetts, work as a teacher and on managerial position in after school program. It pays the bills and I feel comfortable, but I hate the absence of work-life balance, and work environment - we are forced to pump the numbers and KPIs. While I see that it works for some people, but not for me: I much rather work for non profit.
So long story short, I want to switch to working as a teacher in public/private school.

I don’t want any managerial role, it simply is not my personality. I prefer less money for less stress.

I have a good head on my shoulders, I am good at math itself and at teaching it.
I looked at MTEL 65 - middle school math- and I’m pretty sure I can pass it right away.
MTEL 65- high school math- is harder for me, some topics are rusty , since math education system in the country I came from is a little different.

I’d like to start new school year 27-28 in public or private school. I am more inclined to high school: my favorite classes to teach is Algebra II, Pre-Calc. And because I can imagine there is less stress and behavioral issues in High school than in middle school. But it will take me time and work on re-learning some topics.

Or I can start with middle school. But man, those 7 graders….

If you had a choice, what would you do?

TL;DR choose teaching math in middle school, or in high school, if the main focus is less stress?

Thank you !

Hi everyone,

I served as a 1-on-1 math tutor for early high schoolers. One major thing I learned was teaching students specifically about the mistake they were making was more effective than standard concept teaching.

Because of that, I built an educational project called Spot the Math (https://www.spotthemath.com). It’s completely free, has no ads, and focuses only on algebra error analysis and practice.

I’m reaching out here because I want to ask about your actual classroom experiences with this teaching method:

What are the common algebra mistake your students make? (I want to build interactive quizzes specifically around them specifically).

Do you use error analysis or "spot the mistake" exercises for your practice?

From a professional teacher's perspective, what is this resource missing that would make you actually want to use it for your students?

Thank you for your time and for everything you do in the classroom. Any insights are hugely appreciated!

Hey Guys, Conducting a small understanding research for my Subject.
I need to know that have you ever thought yourself to be bad in Mathematics?
And if Yes, then why did you take yourself to be bad in Maths?
Why were you afraid of the Subject?
Please help me Complete this 🥺🥺🫶🏻