The Tutor House: math

Showing posts with label math. Show all posts

Math is Real Life: Pantry Renovation

We moved into a new house this summer. There were plenty of closets in the house, but two of them were pretty useless. One was a tiny pantry located inside the kitchen and a closet just five steps away from the kitchen.

This closet had shelves that were about 10 inches wide and 10 inches apart. I could not even stand up cereal boxes in this closet. My mind started turning...what to do? Then it hit me one evening. Behind it is a walk in closet in a room that is used just for the family office. We could knock down the wall between the two closets and make one giant pantry! I told my husband my idea and he was sold.

It was a family effort. We all took turns knocking the wall down. Every single one of us was excited to get a new pantry space. Little did I realize it would take us three months to complete!

Math was involved in this entire project, but one aspect that took a little more thought was the placement of the door. We wanted to reuse the door that connected to the walk in closet. Our plan was to seal off the walk in closet and move that door into the pantry opening. This would involve a little geometry using translations to get the placement just right.

We could begin with a rotation of the door by 90 degrees. Then slide it down to the adjacent wall. Now we would have to decide where to place the door. In the left corner or the right--maybe right in the middle? Where should the shelves go?

Another option would be to reflect (flip) the door across the wall so that the door opens out into the hallway. But--from a practicality side...that would just plain be annoying. Let's stick with the door opening into the closet.

After much debate, we chose to put the door swinging in and all the way to the right so the door was against the wall. Our shelves were 18 inches wide and had various heights for different foods.

How can you use this real world
example with students?

This example would work great as a small group project or introduction to real world applications of translations. Give your students a piece of graph paper and have them draw out a 4' x 6' room with a 2.5' wide door. Allow them to use translations to show how they would move the door around. Then have them select how wide their shelves would need to be to make the best use of this space.

Interested in more real life applications of math? Check out this monthly linky below.

A monthly REAL WORLD math blog link-up hosted by

4mulaFun, Fourth Grade Studio, Teaching to Inspire in 5th, AND MissMathDork,

The Ultimate Tutor Giveaway!

Let the giveaway begin!!

NOTE: To win the Wacom tablet, you must live within the continental United States.

Grand Prize #1
Wacom Intuos Pro Tablet Medium

See Prize Details Here

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Grand Prize #2
Tutors Nirvana 6 Month Subscription
&
Tutoring eBook Bundle

See Prize Details Here and Here

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Language Arts

See Prize Details Here

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Math

See Prize Details Here

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Ultimate Mathematics Resource Pack for Tutors

ENTER TO WIN HERE!

Isn't this giveaway amazing?! It continues to be amazing with all of these math resources that were generously donated by my teacher friends. Let's take a peek into each resource!

Laura Candler of Corkboard Connections was so kind to donate her entire Daily Math Puzzlers program. I am a huge fan of this program and have used it with my younger math students this past year. It has given such great results and I like how it involves the student in checking their work. The program also comes with a way to track progress as you work through the levels. You can read more about how I use them here.

Katy Lyon of Teaching: The Art of Possibility donated this super fun QR Code Task Card Fraction Bundle Pack. I love the fun colors and students will have a blast using a smart phone to scan the QR as they work through the various problems.

Jennifer of 4mula Fun donated this comprehensive pack of flippable templates that will help your students make connections and learn in a hands-on way. Flippable Templates Mega Pack also comes with editable templates to allow you to make your own special flippables for notes.

Gina of All Things Algebra donated this super math activity called Multi-Step Equations Math Lib. She takes silly phrases and connects them with multi-step equatioins. This activity will bring a smile to your algebra students faces for sure!

Luminous Learning donated this awesome pack of Multiplication and Division worksheets for Grade 3. You'll love the fun and bright colors. One of my favorite features is the grids that are placed around each math problem to help students keep their work nice and tidy which is something a lot of my students struggle with! I really like the clean lines and look of all of the worksheets too.

Stephany of Tutoring Supplies by Design donated this super fun Subway Art Multiplication Match-Up Puzzles. Your students will have so much fun working through their math facts while creation a motivational saying like, "I can multiply!"

The prizes are amazing! Come back tomorrow and enter to win. The contest begins on January 24th and runs through February 2nd. Enter to win all of the prizes! I wish you the best of luck!!

Geometry Cross Sections with Play Dough

The other night I was tutoring one of my high school geometry students. We were working on cross sections and identifying what shapes were made when you "cut" into the shape with a plane at different angles. The images on his homework were making it difficult to easily see what shapes were being made.

I grabbed my youngest son's play dough and we began making 3-D shapes. We made spheres, cubes, triangular prisms, and even managed to make a hexagonal prism!

Materials Needed:

Play dough
Kitchen knife

Here's a look at the sphere we did:

We created a circle when it was cut.

Math Test Checklist

Blair of One Lesson at a Time shared a fabulous independent thinker freebie checklist that helps students get to the root of what they really need help with. With her permission, I've created a checklist for math students! This checklist is appropriate for older grades and really intended for middle and high school students.

Do you have students that are not so hot at taking tests? Most often, students overlook details that can make all the difference in solving a math problem. I created this checklist to remind students of items they need to find in the test.

If they get stuck on a question, they can refer to this checklist to help them analyze what the question is asking. If after trying for several minutes to figure out what the question is asking, they can then ask their teacher for clarification.

Many of my students are bashful when it comes to asking for help. This checklist will help them help themselves!

Twiddla, the Best Tool Currently Available for Online Tutoring

I am so flippin' excited to share this post with you all! Please welcome Angela Culley, an online math tutor. Today she shares with us her favorite online tool, Twiddla! YES!!! Please don't be bashful and leave questions or compliments in the comments. Angela is super talented and here to help. -Adrianne

As a math teacher and tutor, I have been looking for a website that allows students, teachers, and tutors to collaborate on homework, projects, and questions. There are plenty of products out there, but I have only found one, Twiddla, that meets the majority of my needs. Twiddla is found at www.Twiddla.com.

FREE

First and foremost, I want to be able to collaborate with students and colleagues for free. As educators, we spend our own money on many resources, but I want to avoid adding a monthly fee, for a collaborative website,to the list. Luckily, Twiddla offers a web-based software that is free to use. The free access is perfect for any meeting that doesn’t require privacy or the ability to login again later to review saved meetings. Even better, if you create a 30-day trial account, you can contact info@twiddla.com from a teacher email account (.edu) and request that yourfree trial account be converted into a free pro version account!

MATH SYMBOLS

It can be difficult to discuss mathematics without the necessary symbols. This fact alone has held up my search until now. Although many sites offer the interactive whiteboard, you will quickly find that the markers are meant to be a quick tool to focus attention, it is not extremely easy to write and read math expressions and equations. Luckily, Twiddla has a great set of math symbols that can be embedded into your whiteboard space.

EASE OF USE

When inviting a colleague or student to collaborate, I want them to join the conversation without the hassle of creating an account or downloading software. As long as you have a computer (pc or mac), browser and an Internet connection you can use Twiddla! There is no software to download which is extremely helpful. All the host needs to do is select Go (Start a New Meeting) and you have a meeting started. You are immediatelyprovided a URL to share with others. As others join, their username shows up on the right.

In addition to the stress-free invite process, each tool is easy to use, with very little explanation. The site is basically set up so that you can explore each tool without the worry of ruining anything. Did you make a mistake? Use the erase tool or start a new sheet!

VARIETY OF BACKGROUNDS

The user can upload a homework document to review and mark up, a picture of graph paper to graph an equation, a website for demonstration purposes,a text pad that allows all participants to type simultaneously, and a video to share. The possibilities are endless!

AUDIO AND TEXTING

Finally, you have options on how to communicate with others. Texting and audio are both available.

VIDEO CHAT AND GRAPHING SOFTWARE

With all of the positives, come only two negatives. I would like to see video chat added to Twiddla. It is always helpful to see facial expressions when working with others because the same words can be interpreted differently based on a person’s expression. Also, I would love to see an embedded graphing calculator. The best I can currently do is use a graphing website through Twiddla or take and upload pictures from TI-SmartView software.

All in all, the positives definitely outweigh the negatives. Twiddla is a self-described “web-based media playground,” and I have to say that I agree! With free access, you get a bountiful list of useful tools to try out for yourself. What have you got to lose? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

About the Author:

Angela Culley

Owner and Tutor at Math Ninja

As the founder of Math Ninja, Angela provides online and in person math tutoring for all ages including those studying for the GRE, GMAT, SAT, ACT, PPST, and other math specific subject assessments. Prior to launching her business, Angela coached K-12 educators on effective teaching strategies, curriculum writing, and assessment development. As a classroom teacher, she taught math to students ranging from grade 5 - 12. She has also taught both undergraduate and graduate math courses as an adjunct professor at the University of Virginia and Mountain State University.

Test Prep Product Reviews

Hey all! I am always on the hunt for good resources to help my students prepare for tests. They are part of the education process. Today, I'll be sharing two different types of resources with you. All of the opinions herein are my own. I wasn't bribed to bathe them in good light...I just wanted too!

Let's start with Charity of The Organized Classroom Blog's Individual Math and Vocab Lists (grades 3-6). These are really cool. I like how she set them up! Students work on just a few words each week. I swear half the battle with math sometimes is understanding the language! If you use this system, your students will have those math vocab words memorized in no time.

You print the vocabulary words trim, hole punch them, and slide them onto a binder ring. Then you mark the words that you want your students to study with little PostIt flags. I choose the words that my student is currently working on in class and struggles with on a consistent basis. In a tutoring session, you would want to model how to study these words a few times with your student. Find the definitions together. After a few times, you could send the vocab ring home and give them a mini quiz when they come back for tutoring the next time.

Check out Charity's videos to see how she put them together.

I like that this is a self directed student activity pack with fun games to help them learn these vocabulary words. If you are interested in purchasing your own copy of all these math vocab words, please visit Charity's shop.
Next up!

Study Skills from Promoting Success. I bought this because I want to focus a little each day on test taking strategies with my students. Inside this awesome pack is a test taking survey and various ideas to help your students get ready for those pesky tests! I loved that she included resources that I could put to use right away.
Here is what was all included:

Helping students deal with test anxiety
What to do before, during and after the test
Test taking do's and don'ts
Test taking questionnaire
Test question strategies
Several study skill sheets which are great printables to help students prepare for the next test!

I thought it was worth every penny!

What test prep materials have you found helpful?

10 Signs Your Child Needs a Tutor

"Something doesn't quite seem right..." is a feeling parents may contemplate from time to time. Their gut knows that something is going on with their child, but are unsure exactly how to help. As a parent and tutor, I've been on both sides. Nothing is more frustrating than feeling like you can't help your child succeed in school. What warning signs should teachers and parents be looking for?

1. Avoiding School

“I don’t feel good,” is a phrase you’ll hear from your child who struggles with school. Going to the nurse’s office or calling home while at school are sure signs your child needs the support of a tutor.

2. Sour Attitude

Watch for an overwhelming amount of emotion when homework time comes each night. If your child shuts down or throws a tantrum, your child may need the insight of a tutor.

3. Test Scores

There are times when your child’s test scores just don’t seem to make sense because it does not reflect your child’s daily performance at school.

4. Dishonesty

If you are consistently hearing from your child he/she doesn’t have homework, this is a red flag especially for upper grades!

5. Careless

When your child seems unmotivated to please you or his/her teacher and do class work or testing, there is a reason beneath it and a tutor can help you find it.

6. Confidence

If your child is consistently beating themselves down because of a poor grade or performance at school, a tutor can help build his/her self-esteem again.

7. Learning Disabilities

When a child struggles, he/she may have ADD, dyslexia, an auditory processing disorder, etc. A tutor can help guide you to find a study regiment that works for your child..

8. Poor Time Management

If homework is taking longer than it really should, your child could benefit from working with a tutor who can help him/her find systems to increase their productivity.

9. Extreme Anxiety

If your child feels fearful of tests or is even physically sick, a tutor can help your child find test taking strategies to help them conquer his/her fears.

10. Hopeless

If you or your child have given up because it seems that no matter what you try, it’s just not working. Contact a tutor today to help you problem solve and come up with a solution that gets your child back on track.

If you are a parent in need of a tutor, look for local tutors on Craigslist, Wyzant.com, Care.com, or TutorsNirvana.com. All of these companies have tutor directories.

If you are a teacher or tutor, please continue reading below.

I've collaborated with the wonderful professional tutors of The Just for Tutors Facebook group to bring this educational handout to you. Please use this to educate yourself or to share with parents in your classroom or community.

You can download a PDF version for free below. This can not be edited!

If you would like to use this printable as a marketing tool, please purchase my editable version for just $1.00. The only area that is editable is the lower right corner. This allows you the space to add a logo, business name, and contact info.

Guest Blogging at Minds in Bloom

Today you'll find me guest blogging over at Rachel Lynette's blog Minds in Bloom. She is the queen of task cards! Not sure what task cards are? They are little gems of paper that have a question or action to be done by a student. Task cards are loads of fun and there are many ways to use them; one of them being with file folder game boards! Head on over to Minds in Bloom and read more about how I expand the use of my file folder game boards.

Follow this link!

Have you seen all the fun file folder game boards I've created lately? There are over 15 different designs with more being added every month. Check them out in my shop. They are on sale for 10% off until Tuesday, October 15, 2013. Use promo code: GamesGalore

A Halloween Freebie!

One of the things I love most about being a tutor is not being held down by district rules or regulations. A lot of schools are getting away from Halloween and I understand the many reasons why, but students love all the excitement of dressing up and being someone else for a day.

I wanted to make a game board that I could play with my students that doesn't go too crazy into Halloween and wasn't too young looking either. Tutoring a wide range of students makes this difficult! Anyhow, I came up with a fun potion bottle look with spiders for a game board. I am planning on using plastic spiders that you can find just about anywhere on Halloween for place markers. I have my eye on a bag of green, purple, and orange spiders. Cute Halloween erasers would be great too!

This is just a game board and can be used with materials you may already have like task cards, vocabulary study cards, a deck of playing cards, file folder card freebies from me, or my Reading File Folder Playing Cards. The possibilities are endless!

It's yours to enjoy for free! If you like this board, will you do me a favor? Please share it with others on Pinterest or Facebook.

Tutor Math Assessments

Thanks for coming back to my tutor assessment week! If you missed my kick off post, you'll want to read it here. Today, let's jump in and look at both free and paid options for assessing your students.

Math Mammoth: Grades 1-6

This is a wonderful site with a complete math program. They provide assessments in math for grades 1-6. The tests are meant to be given for the grades the student has completed. For example, if you have a student that just started 5th grade, you'll want to give them the 4th grade assessment. If the student scores 80% on the assessment, they have a fairly good grasp of the concepts taught in 4th grade.

I like their assessment because they break it up into topics which are clearly marked on the test. BUT my most favorite feature of Math Mammoth is that they give you answer keys and tell you how to score them. I really appreciate their attention to detail! Read more about Math Mammoth here.

Thinkwell Homeschool: Grades 6-8, Algebra-Calculus

Much like Math Mammoth, they provide comprehensive free assessments but for older grades. They have answer keys as well which makes your life much happier! I also like that the assessments are shorter. 10 questions! Learn more about Thinkwell Homeschool here.

Let's Go Learn: Grades K-6, Pre-Algebra-Algebra

This is a great site because it gives such in depth information when you go through an assessment. It's all aligned with common core standards. When there is a gap in the child's knowledge, you can clearly see what topic with in the common core. I was blown away with the site! They do have a free trial so that you can get familiar with the program and see for yourself it's value.

Let's Go Learn makes assessment affordable with great results! It's just $20 per test. Don't you think most parents would have no problem paying that? If you charged them $60, you could do three assessments during the school year with the student to show progression and to help you alter your lessons too. At the end of the assessment, you can print out the results and go over them with the parents. Don't forget to let them know what plans you have to help their child! Learn more about this site here.

Moby Max: Grades K-8

This is similar to Let's Go Learn with both free and paid versions. You'll find fun games, worksheets, and of course assessments. They also provide placement tests, but you have to pay for a year's subscription to get access to their assessments. It's only $79 per year and that includes unlimited students. If you charged a $20 assessment fee to just 4 of your students, you would have this expense covered and provide assessment data to parents. Read more about Moby Max here.

Whether paid or free, there are great math assessment resources out there. Sign yourself up for a trial on the paid sites and decide which one works best for you! Each time I find a new assessment, I try to share it on my Tutor Math Assessment Pinterest Board. Make sure to follow along!

What assessments have you used and found success with?

Math is Real Life: Car Maintenance

When I met my husband, I was head over heels for him. He was sweet, smart, an engineer...little did I realize how the engineer stuff leaks into your everyday life. One day early in our marriage, he says to me, "We need to go to the store to get a little notebook for your car."

"Why?" I asked, hesitant to know the answer.

"We need to track every time you fill up how many miles you are getting and then also have a place to record when we change the oil or do any work on the car," he replied like everyone did it.

In my head I am thinking, "Crazy! A little OCD...don't you think?" but because I was so in love, I went with it. (I am still major in love, just more willing to stand my ground these days when engineering interferes with being practical)

It took me almost 6 months to get the hang of it. As I kept this car journal, I started to see the beauty of knowing what my gas mileage was. There were times we could see that maybe we weren't getting the best mileage and we would pop the hood to see what needed to be changed or fixed.

There it is! The notebook. This notebook has been with us since 2005. I could hardly believe my eyes! It's been awhile since I had opened and flipped through all of the pages. Each page was recorded so simply. The date...odometer reading...mileage for this tank of gas...total gallons filled up.

On this first page, you can see that we had to replace an air filter and then also the oil and air filter. From oil change to the next was a little over 8,000 miles. Waaayyy more than the manufacturer recommends. Some years our car was more tenderly cared for than others. Let's look and see if we can calculate the average miles per gallon. I am going to look at the third line. I use the gallons on the second line because that is what the third line was driving on. Does that make sense?

394.2/ 20.14 = 19.61 miles per gallon

If I want, I could find the average for this entire page by adding up all of the miles and totaling it, then adding up all of the gallons and totaling it. Then we'll divide. Let's see how close we get to the average on line three.

4719.1/278.54 = 16.9 miles per gallon

There is lots of ways we could analyze the data on this page. How many days between fill ups? How many gallons on average do I put in? What is the farthest I've driven on one tank of gas?

Because we have this car journal, we are able to estimate when we were going to need to replace tires, change the oil, or be aware that something might need repair before it does any significant damage. This gives us peace of mind because we could actively save for an emergency or repair because we knew what our cars habits were. In fact, the fuel gauge inside the gas tank busted. Our car still worked, we just didn't have a nice gauge to tell us when to fill up. Now we rely heavily on this notebook and our odometer to tell us when it's time to fill up and because we know the average amount of miles we can get out of a tank, we know when we've got to gas up.

Who else uses this kind of knowledge?

Car engineers and manufacturers. They have to provide the public with all kinds of fancy information about cars. In fact, the math and science behind miles per gallon and how it relates to a cars performance is so exact, they can program it right into a car and alert the driver when it's time to get the oil changed or stop and get some gas.

Public Transportation. Budgeting for gas to move a population takes a lot of data and care that allows them to predict and prepare for repairs and changing routes to save money.

Just about anyone who uses an automobile would be interested in knowing the performance of their car. It just may save you a headache or two in the future!

Tutor Organization Series: Paperless Tutoring

Welcome back for our third part of the tutor organization series! My friend Sandy of Adventures of a Techy Teacher kindly shared how she does paperless tutoring with me and gave me permission to share here during our series week. She is a talented teacher and tutor. Thanks Sandy!

Hello friends! As a techy teacher, I love to try and be paperless. The less paper I have to take to my tutoring sessions, the better it is for my teacher bag, my pocketbook, and my back! Let me tell you how I go about being paperless in my tutoring business and my classroom.

Paperless Planning

You have to keep in mind that when I plan for my tutoring sessions, I'm usually planning for one-on-one sessions that last for one hour. I like to plan down to the 10 minute mark. I also like to keep things moving and to practice facts & applications of reading and math in different ways throughout the session.

I absolutely love using Google Drive to create, share, collaborate, and edit documents, spreadsheets, and forms. I create my lesson plan template using Google Docs. Here is an image of one of my tutor planning sheets.

I have the Google Drive app on my iPad, so I just pull up my plans and access them prior to my tutoring session.

Paperless Worksheets

Yes, it may sound like an oxymoron, but I use worksheets while being paperless. I like to use whiteboard recording apps like Educreations or ShowMe when working with my students.

The first example I'd like to share is one that I used in an early elementary classroom. We were working on shapes. I had found a circle worksheet, but didn't have enough time to send them to the printer. I was able to save the worksheet to iBooks. I opened the worksheet on my iPad and took a screenshot. Once I had a screenshot, I was able to insert the picture into Educreations. Then I had each student trace the circles and say their numbers. It was very fun and engaging for each student! You can view the Educreations file (it's quite lengthy) by clicking here.

I also like to have my students show me what they know. I have my students use the ShowMe app in place of paper. This gives me a digital recording of what they know that I can share with parents. It also allows me to keep a digital portfolio of student learning that I use to demonstrate growth over time. Here is an example of a third grade student using ShowMe to demonstrate her understanding of lattice multiplication.

Paperless Record Keeping

Using Google Forms, I have transformed the way that I keep track of what I've completed with students during sessions, as well as how I keep track of payments. Google Forms are extremely easy to set up. You can have as many fields as you want. You can be as specific as you'd like. Here is a screenshot of my 2013 Tutoring Form.

If you have any questions about paperless tutoring, please feel free to contact me! I also use a similar procedure for my classroom lesson planning. Check my blog for more information about my adventures as a techy teacher!

The Tutor Organization Series!

I've got a great team of people writing with me this week. We wanted to bring you ideas for getting your tutor business organized! Let me introduce you to the group.

Amy of TutorsNirvana is the head author over at the website's blog. She is full of great ideas and so helpful!

Victoria of The Tutoress...I just love that name! She is one of the top tutors in the UK and is the author of Become a Private Tutor: How to Build a Profitable and Successful Business.

Each day this week, we'll be bringing you different aspects of tutor organization. Are you following by email, Facebook, or Google Plus? If not, make sure to get connected so that you don't miss anything.

One question that I frequently get asked is how to get yourself organized for tutoring on-the-go. I posted on Facebook that I was getting ready for tutoring and asked how others were getting ready. I didn't expect this response from Teresa. She shared her love of binders with me and told me that she keeps them in her trunk for on-the-go tutoring. Let's get a closer look of how she managed to fit her tutoring office in her trunk!

Of course, Teresa uses 3 ring binders to keep all her supplies, games, paperwork in order. To keep things from slipping around, she used old shelves! This is major creativity here! One more shot of her trunk...

When Teresa sent me these images, she also offered to share a tutor session log with all of you! Isn't that sweet?! This logs has a place for comments and payment notes. Did you know that she is a teacher author too? Make sure to head on over and follow her at Teachers Pay Teachers.

Download your freebie here!

Here are some ideas I had for tutoring on-the-go:

I use binders just like Teresa and would organize them in a suitcase to make them portable. I know it seems like you can't predict what materials you might need, but with a little pondering and planning, you'll see that you will take is what you need with you. Let me show you how I would get ready for a math tutoring session.

Here's a list of what's inside the suitcase for a sixth grade math student:

Samsung Tablet
Student binder
Daily Math Puzzler Binder
Grade level math book
File folder games
Game pieces (kept in a pencil case)
Dry erase board and markers
Deck of playing cards
Math Mats
Pencils and paper
My Square card reader (to process payments using smart phone)
Calculator
Ruler
Any math manipulatives

How do you tutor on-the-go? Share your ideas in the comments below. Make sure to tune in tomorrow for Victoria's tips on organizing all your tutoring curriculum.

Screaming Deals at Educents!

One question I get a lot is how to afford curriculum for your tutoring business. Obviously, you can download a lot of free items, but I try to pick things up when a sale is going on...just like this one! I am so excited to be teaming up with some of my favorite teacher authors to bring a HUGE discount to my tutor friends. Educents has bundled fantastic items from these sellers together for a great deal.

There are two deals to choose from. A bundle for 4th/5th grade and one for 6th/7th/8th grade. Take a closer look below.

27 Back to School items for 4th and 5th grade students!

See All 27 Downloads Here!

27 Back to School items for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students!

See All 27 Downloads Here!

The items stretch across the curriculum including reading, writing, math, and even a little science and social studies. Items are printables, activities, task cards, centers, rubrics, activity mats, literature studies, foldables, manipulatives, teaching aides and more.

I decided to include my Math Mats because they make getting ready for tutoring or math stations a snap! With mats for 3rd to 5th grade and 6th-8th grade, you'll be sure to find something that your student needs help with. All you need to do is add a deck of cards to the mat and you've got an engaging activity.