Top 10 Posts of 2009

[Photo by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com.]

Can you believe we’re almost a whole decade into the no-longer-new millennium? Traditionally, the last week of December marks a time to look back and to look ahead: What have we accomplished this year? And what comes next?

More specifically, for bloggers:

• What did people like to read?
• And how can we give them more of it?

Maria beat me to it. John did a twist on the topic. And here is my own retrospective look at the most popular blog posts from this year, along with related blogging goals for 2010.

Warning: All Lists are Biased

I’ve checked the total post views count as of Wednesday morning, December 30th. Any such list is biased toward posts that appeared earlier in the year. It’s almost impossible for anything written in November or December — even something as popular as Narnia math — to work its way into the Top Ten.

Honorable Mention: #10 – #6

10. How DO We Learn Math?
(1,963 views) A “thinking out loud” post about math education, sparked by Keith Devlin’s post Should Children Learn Math by Starting with Counting?

Goal for 2010: Read the articles linked to in Jonathan’s post, especially the one by Hung-Hsi Wu. Think (and write) more about learning and teaching math.

9. April Math Calendar
(1,971 views) My homeschool co-op classes had a lot of fun creating this puzzle calendar. The expression in each square simplifies to that day’s date, like a mini-review quiz: “Do you remember how to calculate this?” (May Math Calendar is available, too.)

Goal for 2010: Make more math calendars!

8. Math Warm-Up: Today is February 4×3×2×1
(2,081 views) One of my favorite quick warm-up activities for math class or club meetings. When I finally thought to record the kids’ answers, this grew into the math calendar mentioned above.

7. Cute Math Facts for Visual Thinkers
(2,628 views) Three creative ways to help children learn their basic math facts. I’m sure the title generated some “curiosity” clicks: How can math be cute?

6. Free Online Math for Middle School and Up
(3,045 views) The Art of Problem Solving people announced their Alcumus program, which provides online lessons on assorted math enrichment topics.

Goal for 2010: I really, truly need to work on adding things like this to my Resource Page!

Runners-Up: #5 – #2

5. Puzzle: Factoring Trinomials
(3,643 views) A handout and several helpful links for algebra teachers. Most of my posts deal with elementary and middle school math, but the popularity of this one makes me think that I should write about high school more often.

Goal for 2010: Explore high school math topics.

4. Mental Math: Addition
(3,695 views) As they learn to work with numbers this way, students grow in understanding — some call it “number sense” — and develop a confidence about math.

Goal for 2010: Expand this post into a series of mental math tips.

3. Real-Life Story Problem
(3,746 views) This bit of humor proved surprisingly popular. I hope readers who were looking for an actual story problem weren’t too disappointed.

2. Math Teachers at Play #1
(5,002 views) I wasn’t sure whether there would be enough interest to support a second blog carnival about mathematics, but everyone has been wonderfully encouraging. Thank you!

And the Winner Is…

1. The 2009 Mathematics Game
(6,420 views) The Year Game is a fun way to exercise your mental muscles. It also seems to be a popular enrichment puzzle for classroom teachers — thus the continuing stream of visits from students looking for homework help.

Goal for 2010: The 2010 Mathematics Game starts this Friday…