I'm the parent kids aged 6 & 10 about to start 1st & 5th grade. I'm a STEM guy, and have worked as a math tutor in the past. Once my kids were old enough, I started them on Singapore Dimensions Math. My 6yo is just starting book 2A (second grade math), and by 10yo finished the series, and is on The Art of Problem Solving: PreAlgebra. My elder also reads Murderous Math, The Number Devil, and other fun recreational math books aimed at kids.

My mother-in-law is worried that this may be harmful because 1) the kids will be bored when studying math in school, and 2) that it may be hard on their teachers to have some kids who are well ahead of other kids.

I have yet to hear any complaints from my kids or their teachers, but maybe it will be more of an issue in later grades.

What do you think of parents who do this? How do you feel about having kids well ahead of grade level in class?

Compass Keeper by Paul | Download free STL model | Printables.com

I've been teaching Calculus for 3 years, and always used the TI-84. My colleague teaching precalc (new teacher) plans to teach them on Desmos. I'm wondering if I should switch too? Looking for thoughts on which is best? FYI, the calulator MCQs was my class's best section last year.

How do you grade formative math assignments without grading 150 papers every night? I’m a third-year sixth-grade math teacher, and I’ve reached the point where I know I need to completely overhaul how I handle formative assignments. For my first two years, if I’m being honest, I don’t think my formative assignments consistently served their intended purpose: preparing students for the summative assessment. The students who actually completed the practice thoughtfully generally did well on the tests. The problem was that a large percentage of students either didn’t do the assignments, turned them in incomplete, or did just enough to make the page look finished. If the system is only working for the students who were already willing to engage with it, then I don’t think my system is working well enough. Right now, I mostly grade formative assignments for completion. That has created an obvious loophole: students know that if there are numbers written in all the blanks, there’s a decent chance they’ll receive full credit. I have 150+ students, so they also know I realistically cannot carefully grade every single problem on every single assignment. I want to change that this year, but I’m struggling with what the alternative should actually look like. How do you grade formative assignments? Is it: * 100% completion? * Part completion and part accuracy? * A simple rubric? * A few randomly selected problems that you grade for accuracy? * Two or three predetermined “focus problems” that represent the learning target? * Corrections required before receiving full credit? * Something else entirely? My biggest concern with grading everything for accuracy is that I don’t want formative practice to punish students for not understanding something yet. I have students who are significantly below grade level who may genuinely work through an entire assignment and still make a lot of mistakes. I want that student to receive credit for engaging seriously with the learning process. But I also can’t continue giving the same grade to that student and a student who writes random numbers on the page just to make it look complete. The other problem is feedback. I want students to know quickly when they’re practicing something incorrectly. Ideally, they should get feedback the next day so they don’t spend several days reinforcing an incorrect procedure. But I can’t carefully grade 150 math assignments every night, write meaningful feedback on all of them, enter grades, plan the next day’s lessons, and still have a life. So I’m trying to figure out what a sustainable formative system actually looks like. For example, I’m wondering if I could select 2–3 representative problems from an assignment and actually grade those for accuracy/reasoning while quickly checking the rest for reasonable completion. Students wouldn’t necessarily know beforehand which problems I’m checking closely, so there’s still an incentive to take the whole assignment seriously. Or maybe there’s a better system I haven’t considered. For teachers who feel like their formative assignments are actually doing what formative assessment is supposed to do, what does your system look like? How much do you grade? How quickly do students get feedback? How do you distinguish genuine effort from nonsense without inspecting every answer? And most importantly, how do you make the whole thing manageable with 150+ students?

First year using Illustrative Math — how are you pacing and handling Regents alignment?

It’s my first year using IM, and I'm struggling to see how high school math teachers are making this work with a state exam. It feels completely misaligned with the NYS Algebra 1 Regents exam. (I don’t know which course I am teaching yet but it will be an NYS Regents class).

Looking through the curriculum, so many essential skill sets needed for the Regents aren’t covered at all. On top of that, starting the year with Statistics makes no sense when there are only a couple of stats questions on the average Regents exam—that’s definitely not where I would choose to build foundational momentum.
I understand that IM aims to build conceptual thinking and problem-solving skills, but students who have massive foundational gaps and need to pass a high-stakes exam aren't benefiting from this approach alone.

For those who are required to use IM (or use it "with fidelity"):
How are you adjusting your pacing?
Are you skipping or reordering units (like pushing Stats to later in the year)?
How are you supplementing procedural skills and test prep without burning through all your instructional time?

Take a moment and think criticall. 80% of attendance for 30 classes just to request refund. Are you ready to put your kid though 24 classes just to request refund??? Let that sink in.

If you are considering enrolling your child in Bhanzu, be extremely careful. Their sales tactics are predatory, and their refund policy is designed as an intentional trap.

Here is what happened in my case:

• The High-Pressure Pitch: I was subjected to an exhausting 3-hour high-pressure sales call pushing for an immediate, upfront payment with vague assurances that everything was risk-free.
• The Hidden Clause: Right after paying, I read the fine print and caught the deceptive catch: you must complete at least 30 class credits with 80% attendance (at least 24 attended classes) just to be eligible to request a refund.
• The Empty Reassurance: I raised this immediately after paying, but the sales rep brushed off my concerns and repeatedly insisted "it will all be fine."
• The Reality: We gave it an honest try. We tested a few teachers and completed 5 classes, but the quality wasn’t there and it wasn’t working for my kid. No parent is going to force their child to endure 24 bad classes just to qualify to ask for their own money back.
• The Support Runaround: When I requested a cancellation, I spent 12+ hours across 6–8 different phone calls. Every single rep fed me the exact same canned script: "we need to check with the internal team."
• The Final Verdict: After weeks of stalling, they outright refused to issue a refund.

They rely on aggressive sales tactics to lock in your money upfront, knowing full well their refund criteria are practically impossible for any family to meet. Do not fall for the pitch. Protect your time and money. If you are considering enrolling your child in Bhanzu, be extremely careful about their pressurized and deceptive sales pitch regarding refunds.

They are not accredit with BBB or any other fair trade commission and there no wonder why given their malicious practices.

I’m a middle school math teacher, and my school is not letting me teach actual content for the first three days of school. 😅 Normally, on the first day I go over my syllabus/class expectations, do a Would You Rather activity, have students answer a few questions about themselves, and then start my lessons on Day 2. This year, I need to come up with activities to fill two full days before I can actually teach math. I’m thinking about doing an activity where I explicitly model what productive group work looks like—how to communicate, participate, disagree respectfully, ask for help, etc.—and then have students practice it. I’d like the activities to actually help establish classroom routines and expectations rather than just playing games to kill time. For those of you who teach middle school, what do you do during the first week that is genuinely useful, not painful for you or the kids, and helps establish classroom expectations? I’m especially looking for: Get-to-know-you activities that don’t feel cheesy Activities that teach/practice classroom expectations Group work/team-building activities with an actual purpose Anything that helps establish routines and procedures Open to any ideas! I’d love to hear what has actually worked for you.

Is this a racist company?

I'm a middle school teacher, and I see that they don't have a lot of black students or teachers in their work. Also, anytime we ask for support there are no black people. I was told that they cancelled the black author they did have and that they are against DEI. I guess it's not for everybody....smh.

Hi everyone! I'm a Kennesaw State University college student and math educator/tutor who has worked with high-school students in calculus. Through that experience, I've become really interested in how game-based learning can help students practice difficult concepts in a more interactive way.

I've also had the opportunity to test game-based math activities in different classroom settings, and I'm currently exploring whether physical educational games can be both useful for educators and viable as professionally produced classroom resources.

For those who teach or tutor Algebra II, Precalculus, Trigonometry, Calculus, or similar subjects:

1. Do you use physical games or hands-on activities to reinforce difficult math concepts?
   
2. Have you ever personally purchased an educational game or supplemental resource for your students? If not, does your school or organization typically purchase those resources?
   
3. What would make a physical educational game worth paying for when free worksheets, printable activities, Quizlet, Kahoot, and other resources already exist?
   
4. What would make you decide not to purchase one?
   
5. Would you prefer an individual/small-group game or a classroom set containing multiple copies and educator instructions?
   
6. What price range would you consider reasonable for an individual educational card game? What about a complete classroom set?

I'm especially interested in honest feedback about purchasing decisions not just whether educational games sound like a good idea. I'm trying to understand what educators actually value and pay for when choosing supplemental math resources.

Thanks for any insight!

Okay, so the last few years, I have been the curriculum director for my school. We have “adopted” a few curriculums for different subjects (Envision for Math). But here’s the problem I’ve encountered. Every time we start looking for new curriculums or want to compare what’s out there, I have struggled to find concise reviews over the potential options we are considering (usually I’m trying to sift through thousands of comments on Facebook or Reddit). And of course, the companies we are looking at sing their own praises. But obviously, as everyone knows, the actual implementation of a curriculum can be quite different than what the company initially proposes.

So after this last adoption, I said screw it, and decided to create a simple and free website that serves as a large database or catalog as you might call it for educators and parents to leave and read concise reviews over curriculum (5-point rating), whether you love it or hate it. I think it’s pretty awesome but only time will tell. Right now, the website just needs people to leave reviews.

If you’re passionate about curriculum or if you’ve hated something you’ve been forced to use in the past, this is for you! Just search for a program/textbook/curriculum and click “add review.” It takes two minutes. ClassCandid.com

Repost from the gifted group…

Looking for home math resources for 5th-8th grade for self paced home instruction?

(Supplemental to public school offering grade level math)

Free snoopy picture for math teachers..Enjoy

https://mysterygraphing.com/

Hi I’m going into my freshman year this fall and am taking Math 135 Elementary statistics. Has anyone taken this class? If so what topics can I expect and do I need specific supplies like a graphing calculator ect. Thanks in advance any advice is welcome!!!

I've been thinking about this while working on an assessment platform and I'm curious how teachers and tutors approach this.

Take something simple like a Year 3 Maths paper.

If I ask for an easy, hard, or balanced paper, what actually changes?

For example, is a hard paper simply one with harder questions? Or does difficulty depend on the combination of questions?

A “hard” Year 3 paper might have:

• More multi-step problems
• Less scaffolding
• More unfamiliar contexts
• More reasoning/application
• Higher cognitive levels
• Questions combining multiple concepts

Then there is the question of balance. Perhaps we want something like 30% easy, 50% medium and 20% hard — but is that really enough?

This got me thinking about whether exam-paper generation can be treated mathematically as a constraint satisfaction / optimisation problem, similar to approaches such as CSP or CP-SAT.

Each question could have attributes such as:

Topic | Difficulty | Bloom Level | Marks | Time | Question Type

And generating a paper becomes a problem of finding a combination of questions that satisfies a set of constraints.

But then we hit an interesting problem:

How do we define the objective function?

What exactly are we optimising for?

Coverage? Difficulty? Cognitive level? Time? Variety? Or some weighted combination of all of them?

I've been exploring this through PaperSetter (https://papersetter.io), the assessment platform I'm building, but I'm interested in the underlying problem more than the software itself.

Teachers/tutors: if you were asked to mathematically define what makes a Year 3 Maths paper “easy”, “hard” or “balanced”, what criteria would you use?

Would love to hear how people actually do this in practice.

I build free math practice tools, and I put together a test generator I'd like honest feedback on before I add more to it: https://mathifykids.com/exam-generator/

How it works: pick a grade band (K–1, 2–3, 4–5, 6–8), pick a topic (89 of them right now), pick how many questions. It generates a randomized test you can print. Options for work space under each question, answer key written on the exam in red, or a separate answer key page. There's a "copy link" button that saves that exact test — if you copy it with the key hidden, the link is a student version with no answer access; show the key first and it's a teacher copy.

Free, no sign-up, no account, no email. I'm not selling anything here — I have a paid app on the same site, but this tool isn't gated by it and I'm not going to pitch you.

What I'd actually like to know:

• Are the questions at the right difficulty for the grade band, or off?
• What topic is missing that you'd need before this is usable in a real classroom?
• Is the print layout workable, or does it waste paper / break across pages badly?
• Would you want multiple randomized versions of the same test (A/B/C) for seating rows?
• Anything that would make you not trust it enough to hand to a class?

Rip into it. I'd rather fix it now than after teachers have wasted prints on it.

Hello everyone im a 3rd year student taking bachelors major in math and i need math teachers to answer a short survey just 25 items: 10 yes or no questions its about ict use in the classroom it wont take longer than 10 mins. Please help out a future math teacher🙏🙏🙏