What it is: After playing against other students on the World Math Day site my students were asking where else they could play similar games when World Math Day was over (students asking to play math games…gotta love that!) I did a basic Google search to see if I could find something similar and came across Math Magician. My students loved racing against the clock on this very basic math fact site. The students can choose from two levels and choose to practice addition, subtraction, multiplication or a mix. They had a great time racing against each other in class to see who could finish each set of facts the fastest. This is a good basic site to practice those math facts.
How to integrate Math Magician into your curriculum: Math Magician can be set up as a math practice center in the one or two classroom or played individually in the computer lab setting. We set up a Math Olympics where the students had some practice time and then raced against each other for the gold, silver, and bronze medals.
Tips: Let parents know about the Math Magician site, they are always eager for an alternative to practicing with the traditional flash cards!
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Math Magician in your classroom.
hi Kelly (I think?)
I have been using all the great Oswego maths games for 3 years now (math magician for tables drill and spooky sequences especially). I have had students gain so much confidence that several who started year 7 in the low ability stream are now confidently attacking Year 9 extension maths. Obviously we are doing many other things in class, but I loved the opportunity to have a fun way of drilling and speeding up basics, especially for those who wanted to work on improving at home.
On Friday, I discovered that one of my (reasonably competent) Year 10 students is still adding up on his fingers (I only started teaching the class this year). Goodness knows how he manages to do as well as he does, but I suggested we may be able to make things a little easier for him, and I went to send him the Oswego links. To my horror, none of them worked! Do you have any idea what’s happened? I’ve spent hours searching for them, but nothing’s working. I would really appreciate any help you can give.
Hi Kay,
Math Magician and the Oswego site is working for me today. Their site may have been temporarily down, the server could have crashed, etc. The good news is that it didn’t disappear! If you still can’t get the Oswego site to work, try a different web browser, it is possible that they stopped supporting certain web browsers. (I am using Firefox 3 and Safari with no problem).
Your students are blessed to have such an amazing, caring math teacher! Keep up the good work!