Around the World with Math

World Maths Day, an international day of math, is celebrated on March 1. "Maths" is the European term for mathematics, although here in the United States we use the word "math." World Maths Day recognizes and celebrates all things mathematical, focusing special attention on getting students interested in careers in math.

In celebration of World Maths Day, you may want to invite some community members who use math in their careers to talk with your class. Also have each student interview his/her parents about how they use math in their own jobs and in everyday life. Let your students try some division or counting as you hand out snacks and drinks. Then try a few math equations or story problems together. Many students find word problems easier when they relate to their own lives. So feel free to include stories about sports, music, movies, money, and other topics of interest to your class. Here's a word problem from our weekly blog post—the answer is given below:

Story problem from Excel Math Student Sheets

Excel Math lessons build confident math students with a unique spiralling system that gets math concepts into long-term memory. Take a look at some samples on our website: http://excelmath.com/downloads/sample_lessons.html

Give your students a link to this fun, easy-to-use Maths Dictionary when they need to recall (or learn) math vocabulary words: http://www.amathsdictionaryforkids.com/. This website is animated and colorful with lots of definitions, interactive calculators and printable math charts. The online dictionary contains over 600 common mathematical terms and words in simple, kid-friendly language. It's a fun refresher for teachers, too.

Excel Math Glossary
Click here to download

You can also download our Excel Math Glossary of Math Terms and print it for your students (or save the file to their computers or tablets). This Glossary is available in English and in Spanish. Each Excel Math Teacher Edition contains an age-graded Glossary in the back, as a handy reference.

Excel Math Mental Math
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One way to help students learn multiplication facts is by teaching them to multiply (and add) in their heads. Mental Math is an easy way to help students practice solving math problems without writing them down. Read more about Mental Math on our previous post: http://excelmathmike.blogspot.com/2010/03/mental-math.html. Download a free Mental Math instruction sheet at www.excelmath.com/downloads.html.

Visit our blog post for additional math activities involving multiplication: Multiplication Tables Made Fun.

Because Excel Math uses a unique spiraling strategy, the lessons build upon each other and need to be taught sequentially within each grade level in order to get the concepts into your students' long-term memory. Try out some sample lessons but then use it for a full year in your classroom to see the amazing results.

The answer to the story problem shown above is four.

If you have additional World Maths Day activities planned, feel free to share them in the comments section immediately following this post. (Click on the word comment to begin.)

Want to find out more about Excel Math? Take a quick tour here.