Animations and Interactive Online Activities

With these animations and interactive resources, students can find length, area, and perimeter at their own pace with as many repetitions as needed to create understanding.

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Hispanic math http://tblr.ed.asu.edu/hmp/

This entertaining and informative tutorial in English or Spanish helps students see what the terms area and perimeter mean. The visualizations and practice problems can reinforce student understanding. MSP full record

Measuring Henry's cabin http://www.cyberbee.com/henrybuilds/extensions.html

When students want to know why they need to learn to measure, show them this cabin blueprint and ask them what they think a builder needs to know to start constructing a building. Students examine the cabin blueprint and find the surface area of the walls. MSP full record

Powers of ten http://microcosm.web.cern.ch/Microcosm/P10/english/welcome.html

What student isn't interested in very large numbers! Before your very eyes see the perspective expand from a 1-meter view of a rose bush to an expanded vision of 10 to the 26 power and then decrease to 10 to the negative 15. The site, also available in German and Italian, uses the meter as the unit of measurement. This visualization can help students see the results of increasing and decreasing scale. It is an engaging way to demonstrate scale and is a nice illustration of the meaning of exponents. MSP full record

Jigsaw puzzle size-up http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/games/sizeandscale/sizeandscale.html

This online interactive jigsaw puzzle activity requires students to enlarge or shrink puzzle pieces before placing them in a puzzle. The choices for enlarging are 1.5, 2, and 4 times larger, while the sizes for shrinking are one-quarter, one-third, and one-half. MSP full record

These next two resources are from the site Figure This! that features 81 activities for middle schoolers. The activities, presented by colorful, animated characters, feature mathematics found in real-life situations. Students work with paper and pencil to answer the multiple questions posed in each activity. From the Figure This! home page you can go to a math index for a correlation of activities to important math topics. Printable versions of the activities are available in English and Spanish.

Access ramp: how steep can a ramp be? http://www.figurethis.org/challenges/c33/challenge.htm

The activity opens with an animation of a Figure This! character in a wheelchair using an access ramp over a three-step staircase, with steps 7 inches high and 10 inches wide. Students are challenged to think about dimensions of an access ramp to determine where the ramp should start to go up the three steps at a reasonable slope. Information about handicap accessibility is included. MSP full record

Windshield wipers: it's raining! Who sees more? The driver of the car or the truck? http://www.figurethis.org/challenges/c32/challenge.htm

Here's something that the future drivers in middle school will relate to. Geometric shapes are used to compare the areas cleaned by different styles of windshield wipers. MSP full record

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Copyright November 2004 — The Ohio State University. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0424671. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.