By Scott McQuiston, Secondary Math Teacher at PACT Charter School
Math can be challenging, and as students move into middle and high school, it can become more difficult for parents to assist their children at home. This led me to do some research on available online resources, and here is a shortlist of some of the resources I have found:
- Desmos.com – Desmos is a free online calculator. This can be a great option, especially for high school levels who need a graphing calculator, if a student forgot a calculator at school.
- Khan Academy – Khan is a wonderful tool for reviewing material. If you create an account, it will save your progress and can also provide some recommendations on what to work on. In addition to providing sample math problems, it includes a button that can provide a hint or a walkthrough on how to complete that problem. There are also videos created to help reteach certain topics.
- Freerice.com – This can be a good site for practicing some of the more basic skills in math. The site is set up by the United Nations World Food Programme, and the site says that for each question answered correctly, their sponsors send them the cash equivalent of ten grains of rice. As you work through problems, it tracks how many grains of rice you have earned. This site can also be used to practice subjects other than math as well.
- CPM Homework Help – This site is created by College Preparatory Math (CPM), PACT’s secondary math curriculum. After selecting the book you need, it provides assistance on the homework problems from the book; at PACT we are using the Core Connections books.
- CPM Parent Support – This is another site created by our secondary math curriculum (CPM). This site was developed to assist parents in helping their students while using this curriculum. One thing I really like on this page is the list of ‘Parent Guides’ available. Towards the bottom of this page, you can expand a couple of options to see the ‘parent guide’ for each book. These are the books that will explain topics for each chapter in a more traditional way, with additional practice problems. I once had an Algebra 2 student seeking these out on their own to study for the tests. As a reminder, we are using the Core Connection Series here at PACT, and because this page abbreviates the book names, here is a list of which books go with each course:
- Pre-Algebra = CC2
- Algebra 1 = CC3
- Intermediate Algebra = CCA
- Geometry = CCG
- Algebra 2 = CCA2