Summer is here (apologies to those final folks who are still in school). Every summer I try to spend some time doing math, focused on challenging myself and learning in ways that will support my teaching. I’ve got four different ways I’m doing that this summer. No big commitments for me, but instead a few different avenues to explore and learn when I have the time and inclination.
Exeter Problem Sets
The Exeter curriculum is online and free. It starts with the upper-middle school math that leads into Algebra I, and continues through calculus while exploring some lovely math along the way. Everything is problem-based, and the curriculum is really just problem sets that build high school mathematics piece by piece. Every time I have dug into the Exeter sets I have learned new math, made new connections, filed away different problems for future use, or had some inspiration about how to better sequence and teach the ideas in my curriculum.
Park City Math Institute Problem Sets
The PCMI problem sets are similar, but are designed for math educators. They require little prior knowledge to dive into and explore some fascinating math topics, while also providing a great opportunity to play with ideas, make connections, and discover. This summer’s sets are being posted one day at a time on this website, and prior years can be found on the same site.
Brilliant 100 Day Challenge
I had never heard of the Brilliant website before, but they are posting one challenging problem a day over the summer for 100 days. The problems are excellent, and I’ve had fun exploring some other ideas on their site as well.
GDay Math
James Tanton’s GDay Math site has a few different courses to work through. I have previously explore Exploding Dots and did quadratics; in both cases I learned for more than I expected about topics I thought I already new. He also offers courses on fractions, combinations and permutations, and area.
Happy mathing!
