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and so many other manipulatives that most math classrooms have on their desks. Math Playground is a website for grades first through sixth and it has many good math games for students to play to build their math fluency. This website has logic games, story games, arcade games, videos, and math review games. Students are always more en gaged when they are having fun and the math play ground allows students to learn through games online. Math Learning Center is a great website for elementary schools with many English Language Learners. This website provides reviews and games both in English and in Spanish for grades Pre - K through fifth grade. Mathigon ’ s Polypad is another website with many virtual manipulatives that are categorized by con tent standards. They have manipulatives for geom etry such as polygon shapes and tangrams. Their numbers section includes number lines, number bars, and number tiles. There is a fraction section that has fraction bars and circles. In the algebra section, there are algebra tiles, coordinate grid, and a balance for equations. Their last section is fo cused on probability, which has dice, spinners, and coins. Graphing is very much a hands - on topic from plotting points and connecting different rep resentations of linear relationships. Desmos has a feature for a graphing calculator that helps teach this hands - on topic easier virtually. On the Desmos graphing calculator, students can graph using equa tions, tables, etc. This supports students learning plot points on a coordinate plane, slope, y intercept, and the connections between equations and tables on a graph. These five websites have greatly helped my team and I continue to make math as hands - on as possible virtually. These virtual manipulatives are resources teachers can use after the pandemic. A student who misses classes, or prefers visual learning, there are re sources that are available to the student at home. In addition, students can continue to practice at home using the same resources used in their classrooms.

ing at their own pace. It is very time - consuming jumping from each student's document to check their work and give feedback. We are used to walking around our classrooms and helping all stu dents at one time. To adjust to the virtual class room, we adapted and mastered programs such as Desmos and Nearpod, that make it possible to watch students learning progress in real - time. This allows us to provide feedback and correct miscon ceptions as they occur. Teaching math virtually has been challenging be cause to learn math you have to engage with the math. Nearpod allows you to see which students are working and which ones are not. In the virtual classroom, where students do not turn on their cameras, this is extremely helpful. The teacher can see everything the students are doing. Instead of waiting to go over answers to practice problems and realizing that students solved a multi - step equation wrong, misconceptions are identified as they work. Nearpod has a wide variety of capabili ties. Some of those capabilities are inserting vide os, websites, virtual field trips, and Desmos gra phing calculator. There are a variety of methods in which students can interact with the material. Nearpod features include: a drawing feature, matching, fill in the blank, poll, and quiz to name a few. Nearpod can be teacher - led, but it is also stu dent - paced. This is a great feature because as stu dents work at their own pace, the teacher can see the students ’ progress. Desmos has been another beneficial resource dur ing virtual learning. Desmos has a variety of capa bilities for student interaction. One of which is a card sort, which has allowed teachers to use their paper sorts virtually. Another feature of Desmos is to give instant feedback as students work through each slide. Students can enter values into a table, for example, and immediately know whether they are correct or not. Desmos has an area for students to share their thinking with their classmates, which is a modified way of having a class discussion. Similar to Nearpod, teachers can see what page students are working. One thing that Desmos has that Nearpod does not is the ability to set a certain number of slides for students to complete under the pacing feature. When I teach with Desmos, I allow

Interactive Websites

Students do better when they are given immediate feedback and that can be difficult when you have 20 to 28 students all on their documents and work

Virginia Mathematics Teacher vol. 47, no. 2

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