High quality engaging math lessons incorporating multiple skills
Community Review for Citizen Math
My Take
Mathalicious lessons are simple to execute and are aligned to many common core standards. Students usually become interested in the outcome and some race ahead in order to find out what happens. Administrators always give me positive evaluations when the pop in to a class while I am using a Mathalicious lesson. When I plan my unit, one of the first things I do is look for related activities on Mathalicous's website. Each lesson comes with a very detailed teachers guide. Teachers should work through the activity on their own first in order to anticipate and prepare for points of student confusion. They are also very responsive for support through email and twitter. The downside is that you must have an internet connection to run the slides that correspond to the lesson, although usually the lessons are not dependent on the slides and it can be taught without them.
How I Use It
Usually I use Mathalicious activities as a culminating activity for students to apply recently learned skills. Some of the activities include project extensions which I have incorporated. These activities work best with students working in pairs or small groups. As a teacher it is important to allow students to discuss and struggle and not be too fast to intervene and "save" them. Most of the activities take about 2 class periods, and are well worth the time invested.