Instructional Software

I was excited about doing this post because during the school year I didn't have a lot of time to sit around and do research on the different resources out there available to me. You will see below that I did use some of the ones I listed, but also I was able to find some new ones. 
Drill & Practice-Multiplication.com (multiplication.com) has several different types of ways for the student to practice their multiplication facts.  It breaks them down in to factors and also combines them for different ways to review.  This would be a great site to let your students on at anytime throughout the day.  It has a feature where it will correct the quizzes and allow you to print them. 
Integrated Learning System- IXL (http://www.ixl.com/1b) is an awesome math site.  We just started using it this year in the county where I work.  If you are not familiar with the site it isn't free, but the county purchased it for us. Each student has their own log in information so you are able to track each student's progress and class progress as a whole.  This is a great tool because it lists the state standards and you can have the children work on specific ones they need help on or the one you are currently teaching.  An easy system to use was to make index cards for each student and write the standards and specific bullets under each standard they needed to master.  It would also send you emails where your class had completed so many hours in math, answered so many math questions, and mastered so many standards. It is a great way to also review for standardized testing at the end of the year.  Another great thing about this program is it provides feedback instead of simply correct or incorrect.  This gives the students a chance to see how they got it wrong or why they got it right.  A term that I learned from our reading is also something IXL does.  Branching drills are the way it is set up so the students will be able to back up to easier problems if they are getting them incorrect before moving on to mastery. 
Often times I would take my entire class into the computer lab during our math intervention time because this allowed the strugglers to have more one on one time with me, yet the advanced students were able to be exposed to more complex stuff. 
Tutorial- Math Live (http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/me5l/html/math5.html) was a site that was recommend to me from another teacher this year.  It has video tutorials on many different math topics.  What I did this year was to use it as a review of area and perimeter before taking the ARMT.  It works nicely because you can go as slow or as fast as you would like.  Also at any point in the lesson you can stop and give the students more examples on the board before moving on to the next part.  In each lesson it gives several examples where the class has to figure out the answers and I would let students come up to the computer and put in the answers.  The lessons are animated and present a problem at the beginning that the students can relate to.  They area and perimeter one I did was where children were playing hocking in the snow and the dad suggested they build a wall around the area to keep their puck in, but first they had to find the perimeter of the area.  But throughout the video is teaching or reviewing with them the topic
Simulation- Edheads (http://www.edheads.org/) is a site where it offers many different interactive simulations from knee replacement surgery to identifying simple machines.  This site is awesome because it has teacher’s guides and offers a lot of tips before beginning this with your class.  One that I would find useful in my classroom is where you design a cell phone.  The students have the chance to design a cell phone for a group of senior citizens.  It must be easy for them to use and have a good battery life.  The students are given the chance to change all kinds of different things on the phone before testing it and presenting it to the company. 
Instructional Game- Hooda Math (http://hoodamath.com/) is a site my students really enjoyed this year.  It was nice to be able to let them go on a site and not have to worry about them not being on an educational game or into something they were not supposed to be doing.  Often times some students would finish much more quickly than others and I would allow them to get on this site.  They were super excited to be able to play games and little did they know they were still doing math and still learning.  I like the roots of life game where it asks them for the square roots of numbers but also ties it into science because it talks about how it takes strong roots for a tree to grow. 
Problem Solving- Yummy Math (http://www.yummymath.com/index.php) looks like it has some pretty good tools and resources for different problem solving activities.  Their website says that they provide teachers and students with mathematics relevant to our world today.  I think my students would love the activity about Father's day and the muffin recipe.  The recipe gives different ingredients with different amounts needed.  The problem being is they can only find the 1/4 measuring cup.  Their job is to find out if they can still make the muffins and if so how.  I could also change this to be for someone’s' birthday to make it work when we are learning measurement.