NCES Kids' Zone - Making Math Fun & Accessible

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[00:00:00] Shanna Martin: Thanks for listening to the tech tools for teachers podcast for each week, we talk about a free piece or two of technology that you can use in your classroom. I'm your host, Shanna Martin. I'm a middle school teacher technology and instructional coach for my district.

[00:00:32] Fuzz Martin: And I'm her producer and husband, Fuzz Martin, and this show is statistically more likely to get done if I'm producing.

[00:00:40] Shanna Martin: Well then,

[00:00:40] Fuzz Martin: well then,

[00:00:41] Shanna Martin: look at your fun little pun. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yay. Episode two Oh five. It's still very wintry here in Wisconsin. Yeah. You think? You think we, I mean, there's been some very pretty sunrises and some very pretty sunsets lately, like we can see a sunset because we're outside of a building, the sunsets.

[00:01:03] Shanna Martin: So that's fun. Yes.

[00:01:05] Fuzz Martin: But also . Winter can bye bye. No, thank you. We may have seen Mufasa recently, but yeah, I am well over the winter, ready for summer. Glad we're going somewhere warm for vacation for spring break. I'm just kidding. We're going somewhere colder than here. Okay. There'll probably be more snow too, but it's

[00:01:27] Shanna Martin: fine.

[00:01:29] Shanna Martin: Yay. So we have a fun little mathing site today to talk about. Also, uh, shout out Ed camp Elmbrook is next week. Oh yeah. Elmbrook. So we love Ed camp. Yay. Ed camp. It's happening next week, Saturday. So that's fun. With that though, we are, there's a tool I found. I shared it with our math teachers. That would be helpful for.

[00:01:53] Shanna Martin: Elementary, middle. It's a fun little math thing site. So it is the NCES Kids Zone. Mm-hmm . Is what we're talking about. The site itself is nces.ed.gov/nces kids slash so it is a super fabulous math and education site. With all kinds of cool things. So my top little like five cool things about the site before we go into the, you know, the, all the details about it.

[00:02:28] Shanna Martin: It is great for math resources. So if you're going to graph with your kids or do some probability, things like that, I'll kind of walk through the different tools it has, but it has lots of cool, great math resources, which our math teachers A lot of them follow a specific curriculum, but they're always looking for ways to supplement that or have options for kids to work at home with families.

[00:02:47] Shanna Martin: So that's also one of my highlights, like you as a teacher can work on this independently, like help your students with it, students can work independently and parents could use it at home. So if you were looking for to support your kid with different math tools at home or some extra practice, this is a great site for that.

[00:03:03] Shanna Martin: It's not really gamified, but it's like using real math tools, which is awesome. It's really easy to navigate. There's these, like, there's big buttons alongside tells you exactly where you're going, very easy to find the information. It's a great way to build on current math discussion. So if you're using a specific curriculum and you want to build on specific graphing tools, or if you want to add, they even have like a cool, like math problem of the month.

[00:03:27] Shanna Martin: That could be one of your like bell ringers at the start of class. So there's a lot of extra tools that you could use just to supplement the math that you're already using in your classroom. And, there's all different kinds of tools to choose from. So it's not just one set of tools to pick from. So there's just a bunch of different resources, which I think is awesome and just a great way to help kids with math.

[00:03:45] Shanna Martin: Cause I know. A lot of times, if kids are kind of stuck on something in math, they need another approach or something else to look at to maybe, and that way might help them think about it. So, so it's a kid zone, so it's NCES kid zone and there are all kinds of tools. So let's talk about the tools. The first one, there's an educator's corner.

[00:04:06] Shanna Martin: If you click on it, it does talk about like specific fast facts about. The, national assessments, for mathematics. It also has other resources. So it links to different blogs or helplines. State education reforms, just links to all kinds of resources for teachers, which I always appreciate teacher resources.

[00:04:24] Shanna Martin: Cause you can find stuff. But one of my favorite parts about this is the create a graph button. I don't know if you're already there playing around with this.

[00:04:32] Fuzz Martin: No, I'm rolling dice.

[00:04:34] Shanna Martin: Cause. We'll get to the dice rolling. Okay. So to create a graph and what's cool is there are examples to show you. So if you're stuck or you want just quick examples for, students to be able to use, you can see graphing.

[00:04:47] Shanna Martin: So there's quick graphs, but if you are going to do it yourself, you can choose either bar graphs, line graphs, area graphs, pie graphs. Or like X, Y graphing, like graphing, graphing. And so I'm going to create a bar graph. You click on bar graph or you have your students click on bar graph. And then the tabs, it almost looks like a little notebook.

[00:05:07] Shanna Martin: The tabs go down the right hand side, like design data table or labels. Preview, and then you can print or save it. So kids can create their own bar graphs based on information. So I'm in a bar graph. I'm going with the vertical bar graph. Going to use, I don't know, a rhombus shape because it's an option.

[00:05:27] Shanna Martin: My background color, I'm going to switch it from white to yellow because we could use a little sunshine. My grid color, I'm going to make a dark purpley blue grid lines. I'm going to change it to eight. I can make a 2d or 3d. I'm going to make a 3d because why not? And then once I've clicked on all those things, you can click the little update button on the bottom, and then you move to your next tab.

[00:05:51] Shanna Martin: So then data, so you actually plug in your own data. So I just finished in back in December with our math teacher. We did. Social studies, math project based on national parks. And we had the kids pull data based on national parks. So, population of people coming into the park, what times of the year, what types of population, if they're camping or visiting.

[00:06:10] Shanna Martin: So, and we had the kids graphing, and this would be such a cool tool that I didn't have then to be able to actually graph, the information we're talking about. So a graph title, we're going to do dogs and then my access label, we're going to do family dogs. I don't know, I'm making things up now, obviously, I'm going to do, or the other way, family dogs versus number of them.

[00:06:37] Shanna Martin: I don't know. Source. You can put your source of information in there onto data sets. You can put in groups, labels, data, again, all the things you can put in there. I mean, just to put it in random numbers because why not, because I can, so I can graph out this information. So I have an image for everybody because it'll be fabulous when I'm done.

[00:06:56] Shanna Martin: What are you graphing right now? I can see it.

[00:06:57] Fuzz Martin: I'm graphing, uh, Fuzz's cups of coffee and it's days of the week and then number of cups of coffee that I drink.

[00:07:06] Shanna Martin: Lovely.

[00:07:06] Fuzz Martin: Yeah.

[00:07:07] Shanna Martin: And then you just click the, add the information and update it labels information. You click preview, boom,

[00:07:14] Fuzz Martin: graph,

[00:07:15] Shanna Martin: it's fabulous. I have my cute little dog's graph and now I have it all set.

[00:07:21] Shanna Martin: I was like a little picture of it and I have this bright, pretty yellow background to brighten our day. Cause it's like blizzarding. It's not actually, but it just feels like it is because it's cold outside. Boom, I have a graph made. And then what's really cool about that is you can start a new graph. You can erase your graph, you can copy the graph, and then you could print it if you want to.

[00:07:39] Shanna Martin: So as a teacher or your kids, they can download it and then they can add it to a project presentation. They can throw it into a Google slideshow. They can use like this link then or download it. So they have the image and then they can use this graph that they created. It makes a cute little graph and really easy to use.

[00:07:55] Shanna Martin: And if you don't have. If you're not working with spreadsheets and stuff, and you just need kids like quick crank out a graph, this would be a great way for them to plug in information. So it's not all of the extras. So I'm thinking like late, like early elementary that you could teach them how to plug the information and it teaches them the different types of graphs.

[00:08:12] Fuzz Martin: Sure.

[00:08:13] Shanna Martin: A great way to practice that. I know a lot of our state testing is based around reading graphs and interpreting graphs. So you could have kids making them and interpreting each other's. Which would be really helpful, how did your graph turn out? Did you choose a bar graph? I

[00:08:24] Fuzz Martin: did. I chose a bar graph.

[00:08:25] Fuzz Martin: I went with a rhombus, but then I looked, it looked, because of the kind of 2D shape that I created, it looked like it was, two bar lines, so I switched it to regular.

[00:08:36] Shanna Martin: More clear visual. Yeah,

[00:08:37] Fuzz Martin: just a regular bar graph.

[00:08:40] Shanna Martin: So that's like the create a graph. So that's just another button on there. They have a tester knowledge button, which is an option.

[00:08:45] Shanna Martin: They have education quizzes. They have math teasers, which I think it's cool. If you click on the math teaser, they have like a little monthly challenge, about Lego building. So it's like. These two kids are building all these Legos. You have to figure out the math problems to be a great math discussion problem.

[00:08:59] Shanna Martin: And besides just one, you can check out other maths. So you can other math teasers. So you can go back into like past or previous months and you can see the different questions they have. So if you want to pose different questions to your kids, you can do that. They have different reports. They have different, education data that you can pull from other publications.

[00:09:18] Shanna Martin: They just have so many resources, which are really helpful. And, that's pretty cool where you can go through and see this cool test your knowledge things. They also have the play games, which is where you were before. And they have, a chance activity where it's, you can do probability and you can roll the dice.

[00:09:37] Shanna Martin: It'll tell you after like 50 rolls or after 23 rolls, it'll tell you, and it gives you the little graph again, if you're interpreting graph. It graphs, it's showing you all the different ways, like the roles would look, so you can practice some probability with your kids. They have a little word search that you can do with just teacher and math like things.

[00:09:57] Shanna Martin: And then like Matthew, there's, it's in there. So there's just some really cool, very easy to navigate, use math tools. I think my favorite piece is the graphing piece, just because I love that you can quick make a graph and you don't have to do a bunch of. Extra background teaching to get a kid to graph versus sometimes if you're trying to do something in sheets, you have to like.

[00:10:18] Shanna Martin: Teach that process along with it. So I find that to be very useful as well. So yeah, and they have a cute little student poll in there and they just, again, resources for kids. So along with resources for teachers and educators, they also have support for kids and I think also some family support too.

[00:10:36] Shanna Martin: So check it out. You can do all your math and practice. You can graph how many cups of coffee you can graph. How many pencils were removed from your classroom? Yes, you can graph how many whiteboard markers have the tips punched in on your whiteboard. Right. You can graph

[00:10:56] Fuzz Martin: how many times, I don't know,

[00:11:00] Shanna Martin: kids raise their hand.

[00:11:02] Shanna Martin: And so it's just kind of a cool way to graph. And again, there's other tools to use too. So I suggest you check it out, even if you're not a math teacher. This would be just a fun one to check out, find some resources and some cool information. So, the NCES Kids Zone, I suggest you check out and try it out with your kiddos and do some fun mathing.

[00:11:25] Fuzz Martin: Yeah, very good.

[00:11:27] Shanna Martin: Because we love mathing. We

[00:11:28] Fuzz Martin: do love mathing. By the way, this is, part of the National Center for Education Statistics. from the government. That's what NCES stands for, not to be confused with NCIS, which is the Naval Criminal Investigation Service.

[00:11:41] Shanna Martin: Yes. Great. And

[00:11:42] Fuzz Martin: also a TV show on CBS. So

[00:11:46] Shanna Martin: on that note, thanks for tuning in.

[00:11:49] Shanna Martin: This has been the Tech Tools for Teachers podcast. If you ever have any questions, you can find me on Blue Sky, Threads, Facebook, Instagram, at SpartanWI. And if you want to get more information on the links to the technology discussed in this episode, you can visit SpartanWI. com. If you'd like to support the show, please consider buying me a coffee or two.

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[00:12:21] Fuzz Martin: the ideas and opinions expressed on this podcast and the smartinwi website, or those of the author, Shanna Martin, and not a firm employer prior to using any of the technologies we've discussed on this podcast, please consult with your employer regulations.

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