Teaching Math with Pinterest
Pinterest can be a math teacher’s best friend. Teaching math with Pinterest involves learning how to use Pinterest effectively so that you can pin and keep track of all of the cool ideas and resources you find. While it’s full of creative activities and links to lots of free math resources, it can also be very overwhelming if you don’t have a system to find, organize and utilize your pins. Below we share some tips and tricks on navigating Pinterest’s math world.
Organize Your Boards
Some math teachers make the mistake of pinning all of their math ideas to one board. While boards like Math from Sandra Muncy are full of cool ideas and resources, it’s hard to go back and find exactly what you need. Instead, follow the example of pinners like Mr. Elementary Math who has boards for topics like fractions, area & perimeter, number sense, and even classroom management. Other pinners, such as Tomball Math and Math Game Time, organize boards by grade-level, which is helpful if you teach more than one grade or want to share ideas with other teachers.
Follow Fellow Math Teachers
Who you follow plays a big role in how effectively you can use Pinterest for teaching. You may want to consider having a separate Pinterest account just for teaching so you don’t have to wade through recipes and other personal pins when you want to focus on math-centered pins. When you pin items, check out the boards from the original pinner to see if that person may be someone you want to follow. Don’t follow people who regularly pin off-topic content or ideas that don’t fit with your style of teaching. Remember that you don’t have to follow every board someone has either. If a pinner has one or two irrelevant boards, it’s okay to hit the unfollow button on those boards. If you need help finding pinners or boards to follow, check out this list (link to other blog) of math-centered Pinterest content to follow.
Look for Printables
When it comes to actually finding materials for your classroom, Pinterest offers a great place to search for printables. Keep in mind that Pinterest allows paid products to appear in search results, so if you just search for “math printables” or “addition printables,” not all results will be free. Instead, add the word “free” to your search or seek out those who regularly pin free printables, such as Free Math Worksheets which regularly highlights the free printables on Math-Drills.com, or Learning Clip which pins free math resources at multiple grade-levels.
Find Hands-On Activities
Pinterest is also a great place to discover ways to get kids out of the textbook, away from the worksheets, and finding real-life or hands-on ways to practice math. While you can find these activities on nearly every math board on Pinterest, it helps to follow boards that solely focus on hands-on math activities, such as the collaborative Hands-On Math board from Creekside Learning, Hands-On Math from the Muslim Family Homeschool, Math is Fun from No Flashcards, or even a more general board such as Creative Teaching Ideas: Literacy, Math, and More!.
Get PINspiration for Your Classroom
In addition to getting teaching ideas on Pinterest, you can also find ways to spruce up your math classroom. There are plenty of boards, such as Math/Bulletin Boards, Math Posters or Math: Bulletin boards, Displays, Misc Templates, that offer ideas to help you spruce up your math classroom. Other boards, such as Math Puns, Math Jokes, and Math Humor provide you with cute jokes, pictures, and other hilarious math-related pins to share with your class or just give you some stress relief after a hard day.
Get Students and Parents on Pinterest
Beyond looking for pins for yourself, you can use Pinterest to help share resources with your students and their parents. For example, you may want to set up a board that contains all of the worksheets you’ve assigned in class or links to any videos you’ve shared with students so parents can easily access them at home. You can also pin cool ideas related to your current unit to give parents ideas of how to reinforce what you’re teaching in class or even share some cool tricks to make doing math homework easier. Searching for and sharing math infographics, such as The Ultimate Math Cheat Sheet or those found on the Infographics – Math board, is a great way to help parents learn some of the cool math tricks and tips they’ll need to work on at home.
Today, teaching math is all about getting kids to think outside the box and get them to incorporate critical thinking and creative skills as they solve problems. Pinterest provides a wealth of resources to help you do just that if you know how to make it work.
How do you use Pinterest? Share your ideas and tips to help other math teachers make the most of Pinterest in their classrooms.