Khan Academy is a not-for-profit website that offers instructional videos covering anything from basic addition to matrices in Calculus. While these instructional videos do not replace the value of quality classroom teaching, the site does provide an excellent opportunity for practice, motivation, and exploration.
http://www.khanacademy.org
Last year, 18 students within my class signed up for Khan Academy. Of those 18, about 12 spend at least an hour of their personal outside-of-class time working on the website each week. By the end of fourth grade, I even had one student who successfully worked his way up to developing skills in the area of Calculus (remember limits and functions?) Signing up was easy as most parents had either a Google or Facebook account. This year, Khan Academy can allow you to set up an account through their own website in addition to Google or Facebook!
If this is of interest to you (and I HIGHLY recommend it...math becomes incredibly motivating with this interface), sign up for an account and add me as a coach. To do this, click on:
- Visit Profile --> Community --> Coaches --> Add a Coach --> Enter 'brandonjamesbauer@gmail.com' .
I'm sure I will bug you about this again this school year. I can't express enough how this provides free, organized, and motivating practice for all student. It seems too good to be true, but my class accumulated over 2 million points last year (the equivalent of approximately 18 kids solving around 600 math problems each...woah!).
As always, if you have questions, please let me know - I'm posting two helpful links to the site below. Happy calculating!
Official Website http://www.khanacademy.org/
60 Minutes - Khan Academy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxJgPHM5NYI
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