Category: eMathInstruction Discussion

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Accessible Formats for Visually Impaired Students

Over the years we have received inquiries on whether our materials are available in Braille or large format for visually impaired students. Converting any text, especially mathematics texts with all of their diagrams, is not an easy nor an inexpensive process. The state of New York, through the New York State Resource Center, has had several of our texts transcribed into Braille and or large format by T-Base Communications. The NYS Resource Center has graciously granted permission to allow T-Base to sell eMATHinstruction texts in transcribed format to anyone in need. If you or anyone you know is in need of mathematics resources for visually impaired students the following titles by eMATHinstruction are available.

Titles Available in Braille

  • Common Core Algebra I
  • Common Core Geometry
  • N-Gen Math 8

Titles Available in Large Format

  • Common Core Algebra I
  • N-Gen Math 7
  • N-Gen Math 8

To inquire or place an order for any of the above eMATHinstruction titles in Braille or large format please contact T-Base communications at [email protected]. Please note that eMATHinstruction is not profiting from, nor involved in, the production or sale of any Braille or large format titles of our works. Our only involvement is to connect those in need of accessible formats with those that can provide them.

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Remote Learning with eMATHinstruction

The past week has been interesting and trying.  Recently, we learned of several states that have closed school.  In states such as New York, many schools are now closing for two weeks to over a month.  Please know that we at eMath consider every teacher out there to be a hero. You are likely being asked to prepare to do the impossible, teach students remotely.  We are here to help and support you in any way we can.  We have been getting many questions about how eMATHinstruction materials can be used so wanted to send out answers to a few common questions.

Q: Can files be posted?

A: We have several different types of files and will address each independently.

  • Lessons and homework sets that are already available for free download may be reposted though we greatly prefer that you just post the appropriate link to our website.  This will likely be easier for you in the long run.
  • Unit reviews are only available with the purchase of a membership and may be reposted to closed systems only such as Google Classroom. 
  • Answer keys and assessments are only available with the purchase of a membership.  These are our most sensitive files.  These may only be posted to closed systems inaccessible to the broader internet (such as Google Classroom).  We ask that these most sensitive files be removed from the closed system after they are needed. 

Q: Why can certain documents such as assessments, answer keys only be posted to closed systems?

A: There are several reasons we prohibit the posting of these items to traditional websites and web pages. 

  • The first and most important reason is academic integrity.  Students are quite internet savvy.  Students from outside of your school will find the files you post and use them to cheat.  You would not want your students finding answers on the internet so we ask that you be considerate to teachers and students on the other side of the country.
  • eMATHinstruction provides a plethora of files for free.  Unfortunately we cannot provide everything for free or we would not have the funding to continue to provide new resources.  If our paid content is posted to the internet where anyone can find it we lose out on the ability to sell our material and therefore continue to do what we do.

Q: How can videos be easily accessed?  Can they be downloaded?

A: All of our videos are on YouTube.  Videos for Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II are also on TeacherTube.  Unfortunately the file size of videos is quite large and impractical to provide off of the internet.  We understand that many folks struggle with access to internet due to living in a remote location or due to other family circumstances.  At this point, in order to view videos, access to the internet is needed.  Below are the links to our YouTube and TeacherTube channels.  Videos are also accessible from our website.

Q: Can we still purchase books?  How can we get them to students if our school has already closed?

A: Yes.  We have books available.  We can work with your school to possibly ship books directly to students if needed.  Please contact us directly to discuss.  If your school has not yet closed and you think you may need books, your best bet is to order them as soon as possible. 

If there are any other questions you have or any other way we can support you, please feel free to reach out to us.  You can reach us at [email protected] or [email protected].  We are here for you.  We hope you all stay safe and healthy.

Kirk and Shana Weiler

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New York City ShopDOE and FAMIS Listings

For the past three years, eMATHinstruction has been working to get our books available on the New York City ordering portals ShopDOE and FAMIS. Just yesterday, we got the last of our current books, Common Core Algebra I in Spanish, up on the two sites!

In order to find our materials on ShopDOE and FAMIS easier, we have published a ShopDOE and FAMIS item list. The two sites differ in how you find books on them (ShopDOE uses item numbers whereas FAMIS uses ISBNs). The pdf file below gives a complete list of these numbers:

eMATHinstruction ShopDOE and FAMIS List 2018

As well, in our Shop, we also have these numbers listed for each individual book. Just go to the workbook’s product page and click on the ShopDOE/FAMIS Information tab:

Once you click on that tab, you will then see an exhaustive listing of both the ShopDOE and FAMIS information:

Visit the site to see all of the listings and get those book orders in. By mid-August books demand will start to outpace supply and we all know what happens then.

 

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eMath March Newsletter

It’s March 14th. Pi Day!!! Here’s a nice pi-ku for you:

Pi-ku

Also, in the greater Northeast, it is Snowpocalypse 2017. So far about 9 inches have fallen with another 15 or so on the way.

We’ve been exceptionally busy lately here at eMATHinstruction. I’m going to switch things up a bit in this newsletter and give you the news first and discuss add-ons second.

On the Common Core Geometry front we’ve been moving ahead nicely. We just received the first formal proof for the book.

Geometry Proof

That means once we’ve done one more round of editing it will be ready to go to press. We’ve also finished the rough draft of the answer key and will continue to work on it as well. We hope to have both workbooks and answer key subscriptions available for purchase by Memorial Day weekend. In our store, it appears that both the workbooks and answer keys have been sold out when in fact they aren’t even for sale yet. But, we can create Quotes for the two products if any schools need these for next year’s budgets.

Most of our time and energy now is being devoted to producing the Common Core Geometry videos. We will have full length lesson videos for each of the 95 lessons in the curriculum. We are now using a SMART Board and screen capture technology because of the more tactile approach to Common Core Geometry.

Videos will be posted as they are finished. Our target is to be done with all videos by July 1st. We will certainly have many of them posted before that time, so if students need refreshers on how to do various constructions or other topics, point them to our Common Core Geometry Course, which is now officially on our Home Page:

Home Page with Geometry #2

During the next two months, we will be very busy recording the videos, so it may take more time to get an email response and we will likely be able to take less calls than normal. We do promise to get back to everyone who communicates with us as fast as we can. Just please be patient with us as we head into the final stages of Common Core Geometry.

We also have news on the New York City front. With the help of the good, and extremely patient, people in the New York City Division of Contracts and Purchasing (DCP) and Instructional Materials Review Unit (IMRU) we are very close now to having our materials listed on ShopDOE/FAMIS. They are now reviewing our books and we hope they may be listed by the end of March or early April. We are fairly certain that NYSTL approval will come shortly afterwards. But, to be honest, we are still a bit confused about that process (no great surprise).

We’ve got new add-ons this month for our three main courses. For Common Core Algebra I Add-Ons we have two new additions this month. We’ve got a Unit #10 Formative Assessment Form B exam. That’s our unit on Statistics, so this is a nice beefy make-up modeled on the original. On top of that, we also spent a great deal of time this last month uploading all of our videos onto TeacherTube. We’ve heard throughout the years that some schools block YouTube. My district of Arlington never did block YouTube, or if they did they unblocked it many years ago. Anyhow, all of our links on our site will continue to be YouTube links. But for this month I created a TeacherTube Hyperlinked Table of Contents so that teachers and students can easily find the video they want.

For Common Core Algebra II Add-Ons it is a similar story. First up we have the Unit 12 Formative Assessment Form B. This assessment is for our unit in Probability, so we are getting close to the end of the course with this one. Next month, when we hit Statistics, we plan to offer a Form B assessment  as well as a packet of statistical simulation results that you can work with your kids on interpreting. Finally, we also have posted the TeacherTube Hyperlinked Table of Contents for that course as well.

For Algebra 2 and Trigonometry Add-Ons, we continue our trend of adding on Formative Assessment for the course. We never did this when we originally created the course some nine years ago. For this month we’ve added on the Unit 12 Formative Assessment (Statistics) and the Unit 13 Formative Assessment (Sequences and Series). We’ll have to think hard about what to add-on for the April and May rounds. Perhaps reviews quizzes?

Alright. Well, I hear the first round of blowing snow off my driveway coming. Stay safe and warm and have a happy Pi-Day! Lest we end this newsletter on anything but an odd note, here are three pies singing the digits of pi in Finish thanks to Phineas and Ferb:

 

 

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eMath February Newsletter

We’ve now moved past the mid-winter point (Groundhog’s Day) and are heading towards spring, even though our recent blizzards don’t make it seem that way. We’ve got some add-ons and some news here at eMATHinstruction, so let’s get to it.

For this month’s Common Core Algebra I Add-Ons we have three new additions. We start with a worksheet that gives students extra practice simplifying square roots. This is a nice worksheet if you just feel kids need extra practice on this skill. From there we move on to a Form B Formative Assessment for Unit 9 (Roots and Irrational Numbers). Our last add-on for the month is a mid-unit quiz for Unit 10 on Statistics.

We have some nice materials for our Common Core Algebra II Add-Ons this month. They are all about Unit 11 – The Circular Functions (i.e. the Trig Functions). First we bring you a mid-unit quiz that covers the first 5 lessons and will give teachers a good sense if students are understanding the basic concepts of these non-algebraic functions. Next we have a wonderful modeling activity where students use sinusoidal functions to model the length of daylight in both Poughkeepsie, New York, and Brisbane, Australia. This graphing activity uses the online graphing calculator Desmos, so there is no need for you to enter data by hand or into any calculators. Students just click on a link and are taken immediately to the data. Finally, we have a Form B Formative Assessment for Unit 11.

For the Algebra 2 and Trigonometry Add-Ons, we bring two solid Formative Unit Assessments. The first is for Unit 10 – Exponential and Logarithmic Functions. This is a challenging assessment that will really let teachers see how much students have learned about these challenging topics. We then bring you a Formative Assessment for Unit 11 – Probability. Students will be challenged to deal with combinations, permutations, and binomial probability. Fun!

Besides add-ons, we have news on other fronts. We have experienced a great deal of growth in our website traffic in the last year. So, in the next week we will be switching hosting services to one that can carry all of the traffic easily. That might cause a few hours of our site being out, but we will attempt to do that in the overnight hours on some weekend night when hopefully no one is actually using our site.

Common Core Geometry is coming along nicely. We are done with our first draft of the answer key, which also means we are done with our second round of editing on the book itself. We plan to have Common Core Geometry workbooks and answer key subscriptions ready for quote in mid-March and ready for sale around Memorial Day. We have just begun to work on the videos and will begin to release them as we get them done and edited.  We may be taking our time on these and because of that may not have the QR codes on the first edition of our workbooks. But, if that is the case, we will certainly publish a hyperlinked table of contents and will always have the links handy on our website.

We continue to work on a Spanish language version of Common Core Algebra I. We believe we will be ready to sell this for the 2017-2018 school year (it is done in its first draft).

Well, that’s about it for now. As always, contact us if you have suggestions for add-ons or if you have any questions. You can always reach me at: [email protected].

 

 

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Common Core Geometry Beta Version Finished – by Kirk

The first version of Common Core Geometry is now done and completely posted. It consists of 10 total units:

geometry-table-of-contents-screen-shot

The total text is now at 95 lessons with homework sets. I’m always happy if a curriculum is somewhere between 100 and 110 lessons. I’ve found over the span of my career that in a 185 day school year, the 100 lesson count is a good benchmark given all sorts of extra days needed for reinforcement, review, assessment, assemblies, fire drills, snow days/delays, Regents exams, and so many other things that stop us from teaching content.

I would assume as I now head into the Answer Key part of the process that I will likely add some additional lessons. There is no mention of surface area in the Common Core Standards or on the New York State Formula sheet, but I still think it is a topic worthy of inclusion in that last unit on Measurement. I’ve only included one lesson on radian measurement, but I believe that could probably use another day. I’m sure extra days on practice of proofs would also be helpful as well as reinforcement days here and there.

Of course, all of that may also come in our second version of the text. After the answer key is done, or partly done, we will begin work on the videos. We are planning on making these much better quality than those for Common Core Algebra I and Algebra II, so they may take some additional time to create. We anticipate beginning the videos in early February, but don’t have a completion date yet for those. We will have all materials ready for the 2017-2018 school year.

We invite teachers to use any of the Geometry lessons and homework sets we’ve posted. Because we have not begun the Answer Key, they are in their Beta version and teachers should work through them before giving them to students. We appreciate feedback both in terms of typos and in terms of mathematical content. I can promise we will correct the typos and will consider suggestions on mathematical content as long as they don’t radically alter the order or structure of the course.

Although Phase 1 of Common Core Geometry is now done, we have two phases yet to go (Answer Key and Videos). It’s about time I got started on Phase 2. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and are ready to get the next month over with before the big break. As always, you can email me with feedback at: [email protected].

 

 

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Shipping Information

Hello Customers of eMATHinstruction,

We continue to send out answer key CDs each day as soon as we get orders for them or that include them. The workbooks, those have more of a lag time. My great printers at NetPublications in Poughkeepsie, New York, are working tirelessly to get these things printed, packaged, and out the door.

The latest timeline is as follows:

1. If your district got me the order before August 15th, then the books are shipping today and should get to you by tomorrow (August 26th) or Thursday (August 27th).

2. If your district got me an order for workbooks after the 15th, but before today, those start to go into production soon. They will ship on or before 9/9/2014, but that still leaves you at least the first week without the books. Sorry about that! Consider copying the first two weeks from this site.

Email me at [email protected] if you have questions about the status of your order. I’ll always give you the best information that I have.

Best,

Kirk