A Description of a Resource Depository

Before becoming the tech lead teacher at my home school, I served as the math/science specialist for more than seven years. One of the responsibilities I had was to be a resource for classroom teachers. “Do you have any ideas on how to teach subtraction with integers?” “Do you have any lessons that integrate math and language arts?” These were just a couple of the question that I would be asked and expected to answer. Due to my work with the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, I was interested in math topics for high school students.

One of the resources I would regularly use is the Math Forum’s Teachers’ Place. The Math Forum started in 1992, and is a part of the Drexel School of Education.

The Teachers’ Place has a simple organization. Its four categories are Primary and Secondary, College and University, Special Interest and General Interest. The Primary and Secondary category is subdivided into four sections: Pre-Kindergarten Teachers, Elementary Teachers, which itself is divided into K-2 and 3-5, Middle School Teachers and High School Teachers. Each of these is divided into two parts: For Your Classroom and For Your Career.

For Your Classroom contains lists of projects, individual lesson plans, collection of lesson plans, math sites for kids and Teacher2Teacher. Teacher2Teacher provides a place to ask questions or get involved in on-line discussions.

For Your Career provides links to on-line courses, articles, publications and professional organizations.

One of the links listed under Special Interest was of special interest to me as a math/science specialist. The link was to a number of science fair math projects.

One of my favorite links is to Dr. Math. Dr. Math answers questions that are posed to “him.” The Dr. Math FAQ section lists topics from A to W, (there are none listed for x, y or z.) An example of an FAQ topic is Prime numbers: What is a prime number? What's the 'Sieve of Eratosthenes'? What is the largest known prime? This question is linked to a Dr. Math site that of course answers these questions, but also provides links to Dr. Math archives on the subject as well as a number of web sites related to the topic.

I have used Math Forum Teachers’ Place for many years and will continue to do so because it delivers a wide variety of resources for the classroom teacher. I also find the site to be easy to navigate. The Teachers’ Place also provides the “extras” that many teachers would find valuable. So if you need a list of the first 10,000 prime numbers…