Teachers can often fall into the homework – lecture – practice – new assignment pattern, especially in math classes. While this structure offers a good general pattern to follow, it can become boring and monotonous for students and teacher alike! Furthermore, students often pick up the implication that math is only valuable for solving textbook problems, and it practically invites the dreaded “When are we ever going to use this?” question.

On the other hand, there are many sources of realistic, real-world activities that get students out of their seats, and into spreadsheets, graphing calculator applications, and computer models. Traditional topics (like factoring and transformations of graphs) can be taught with different approaches which help students’ understanding and allow them to transfer their learning. Working with differentiated groups, mini-checks of understanding, and effective homework strategies will be demonstrated and discussed.