About

Bio

Thank you for visiting imathworksheets.com.  My name is Mr. Colwell, and I have been teaching middle school mathematics in the Chicago Public Schools for over ten years.  Besides teaching, I have been tutoring students for an even longer period of time.  I hold a master’s degree in Math Education from the University of Illinois-Chicago.

During my career I have primarily taught students at the middle school level, 7th and 8th grade.  However, I have tutored students of all ages in areas ranging from basic computation (e.g. adding & subtracting) through algebra (e.g. functions and equations) all the way up to everybody’s favorite, calculus!

imathworksheets

Throughout my career in math education, I have served as the head of my school’s Math department, designed mathematics curriculum for all elementary and middle school grades, and chaired committees to analyze and select a series of Mathematics textbooks for our teachers to implement.

As I have gained more experience and insight into the teaching and learning of mathematics, I have noted one fundamental flaw preventing many of my students from achieving success in the classroom: a lack of basic math skills.  This deficiency in elementary math knowledge is evident every level of the educational chain.   I have witnessed this deficit while watching 4th graders struggle to remember their times tables, while seeing glassy-eyed 8th graders try to reduce fractions, while observing honors algebra students quiver in the face of negative integers.

Many of our schools’ current math curricula tout an emphasis on developing the problem solving abilities of our children.  This is a noble goal indeed, and also serves as the primary focus of all of my math classes.  Unfortunately, as we have turned our attention towards these critical thinking skills, we have neglected to instill our students with a core mathematical background that will enable them to tackle these complicated problems.

With imathworksheets.com, I attempt to provide teachers, parents, and students with a way to sharpen those basic math skills necessary to survive in our 21st century world.  Each of the mathematics skill sets you encounter on our website provides a significant opportunity for you, your students, or your child to find success in math.

Each page contains a large quantity of practice problems devoted to a specific topic.  The first worksheet is designed as an entry point for any basic learner, and then becomes progressively more complex as different mathematical concepts are introduced.  For example, if you visit our “Fractions” page, you will notice that students begin by adding simple fractions that have the same denominator.  On this first worksheet, none of the final sums will have to be reduced.  This enables the learner to focus strictly on the concept and algorithm of adding fractions.  Only after they have completed several exercises, will the student be asked to find common denominators and reduce fractions.

The exercises found here at imathworksheets.com are not meant to provide a complete mathematics curriculum for any student.  The free math worksheets and online activities are meant to further the development of you or your child’s basic mathematical abilities.  These activities can serve as great supplementary material for mathematics at any grade level, provide great opportunities for students to review past material and remediate deficiencies.  I hope that you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed putting them together!

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2 Comments

  1. Travis Harris

     /  February 13, 2014

    Thank you, Sir! This is very helpful. I can use this material to reteach my students that are lacking basic skills.

    Reply
    • Mr. Colwell

       /  March 23, 2014

      I’m glad that you found the site useful. Thanks for visiting!

      Reply

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