National Council of Teachers of Mathematics

Visiting and exploring the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics or the NCTM and the illuminations link has encouraged me to become a member. Even though the sites require a membership to have access to all the available materials, these sites will enhance my teaching skills and my professional development in mathematics because the sites includes materials that give access to lesson plans and interactive activities and they give professional guidance and principles that maximize my ability to teach mathematics effectively. "All schools and mathematics programs should provide students and teachers with access to instructional technology, including appropriate calculators, computers with mathematical software, Internet connectivity,....." (The Role of Technology in the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics, 2008)

The NCTM develops a mission statement, vision statement, and priorities to give the members of the NCTM an understanding of why it was developed and their purpose. These statements and priorities demonstrate what the NCTM wants to accomplish. They want to provide teachers with the highest quality of resources to ensure that we are able to teach our students material that they will retain and use again in future classes. Some of the supporting material that is offered to teacher's curriculum is focal points. "These areas of instructional emphasis can serve as organizing structures for curriculum design and instruction at and across grade levels.......Because the focal points are core structures that lay a conceptual foundation, they can serve to organize content, connecting and bringing coherence to multiple concepts and processes taught...." (What Are Curriculum Focal Points?) An example focal point is the book "Focus in High School Mathematics: Statistics and Probability". This site offers many different books that have a focal point that assist in teaching different mathematical curriculum. Supporting material included for focal points are teachers guides, sample pages of books that are sold, and many other materials. Each book that is sold includes a description of the book and related product links.

The illuminations link was interactive fun. This link included games and activities, lesson plans for grades pre-k to 12th, and provided links too similar web-sites. The activities included makes learning math more interactive. Playing with the games that were accessible to non-members did not seem like learning math in the traditional since. "The main goal of Illuminations is to provide online resources to improve the teaching and learning of mathematics for all students." (Kelley, 2001) Interactive games help students learn without them realizing that they are learning. One of the games on the illuminations link made learning fractions much easier and enjoyable. It allowed the user to play with different shapes and colors while manipulating the amount of the fractions

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