Keep your math brain sharp in the summer
Brushing up on math of last year or getting a headstart for next year can be as easy as playing video games with the technology of today……you can easily find online resources that excel in animating abstarct math concepts in ways that were never thought of before……but don't take my word for it. I invite you to visit these links to see for yourself.
For a look at the content of the Math Curriculum for the next year, go to Ontario Curriculum for Grades 9-10 and Grades 11-12. You can also visit your local library to get a reference copy of high school math textbooks, or you can place a hold on the textbook to get a copy to take home.
Once you decide which units you need to review, make your starting point a visit to Khan Academy. You can start by watching a video explaining each concept in the unit you are studying. It is a great website that gives you video tutorials of each math concept with practice questions. The linear equations unit under Algebra has 99 video tutorials, and you can ask questions and get feedback with each tutorial. You can open an account and start a self-paced learning plan and get access to an infinite number of practice questions. Take a look at the tutorial explaining "What is a variable".
For a more animated and interactive math, check the University of Waterloo Wired Math.ca. The interactive games in this site are based on the Ontario Math Curriculum expectations for grades 7-10. Each grade has its own set of games and the games are arranged aacording to the units taught for that grade…..try Number Sense and Numeration for grade 9. You will be playing Rags to Riches while solving Alegbraic equations or a game of Tica TAc Toe to learn rules of square roots.
For more fun with solving math problems, you'll find The Learning Express Library a hidden treasure of test prep practice questions. It is a database that you can access through TPL A-Z list of All Databases. By creating an account, you can work on practice tests and save your results until you finish the test. Under Algebra alone, there are 14 different practice tests, one of them is 1001 Algebra problems. Below is a snapshot of the High school menu options available to you in that database.
I hope you'll find doing math with these websites…..as much fun as playing video games…maybe not quite….but as close as you can get.
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