National Math Trail Participants,

We are proud to announce that the first submission of 2001 has arrived from Roxanna Kerns' 4th Grade class at Hyde Elementary School in St. Joseph, Missouri. Check out what a wonderful trail theycreated www.nationalmathtrail.org.

If you have a question about creating submissions, working with technology, or anything related to the National Math Trail, please send it to me, gil@fasenet.org. Each week we will address your questions with advice from our curriculum staff and excerpts from interviews we have conducted with Kay Toliver.

Additionally, each week we will be letting you know about links to Websites that contain

resources you might find helpful when working on your Math Trails.

Question: Why do you generally have students working in teams on the Math Trail?

Answer: You could have students do the math trail individually if you wish, but when they

work in teams you will find that they will tend to communicate to each other about what

they are doing, and when they are explaining things to each other they are also improving

their own grasp of the concepts involved. You will find that when three or four students

work in small groups, they are more likely to come up with creative and interesting problems

than they would working alone. Make sure your speakers are turned on! Listen to

Kay Toliver talking about the value of studentsworking in group activities. (From the Decimals

episode of the series, "The Kay Toliver Files".)

http://64.225.128.168/asx/nmt/ktf_decimals.asx.

Websites of interest:

Click on bonus.com, and you'll go to "RealWorld Math for kids" and ways to use math

in everyday things.

http://w0.bonus.com/bonus/card/Online_Math_Applications.html

For anyone doing math problems related to Native

Americans, here's the geometry site for you:

www.earthmeasure.com

For lots of interactive graphing models, this site allows you to create graphs and copy them

to a document or web page.

www.exploremath.com/activities/index.cfm

Gil Bandel

National Math Trail

Outreach Coordinator

FASE Productions

4801 Wilshire Blvd.

Suite 215

Los Angeles, CA 90010

323.937.9911

323.937.7440 fax

gil@fasenet.org