Having trouble reading this email? View it in your browser.

In This Issue

What did you do on your summer vacation? A familiar back-to-school thesis to any student, and a topic we explore in this issue. This past summer, we held the 2009 Illuminations Summer Insitute, in which several exceptional teachers were selected to spend part of their summer at NCTM receiving professional development and creating new lessons and activities for Illuminations.

In this issue we are excited to share a Success Story about one of our participants and an activity she helped develop, as well. This issue also includes a new Brain Teaser and By the Numbers.

Please continue to forward our newsletter to any interested colleagues. If you do, and your colleague subscribes, your email address will be recorded, and you will have a chance to win your book of choice from NCTM's Navigation series.

Success Story: Love at First Site

It has often been said that love happens when you least expect it, and now the same can be said for finding math resources. Victoria Miles, 7^th grade math teacher at Abigail Adams Middle School, came upon Illuminations after a Google search directed her to the site.

Spotlight On: What's Regular About Tessellations?

Bring an art project into your math class by challenging students to fit squares, triangles, hexagons and more into beautiful tessellation patterns. In What’s Regular about Tessellations? students are challenged to discover the regular and semi-regular tessellations using manipulatives and online tools in this interactive lesson. Victoria Miles developed this lesson and the associated tool, Tessellation Creator, during this year’s Illuminations Summer Institute.

2009 Illuminations Summer Institute

Thank you to the following educators who participated in the 2009 Illuminations Summer Institute. These educators received professional development and helped in creating new lessons and resources for Illuminations.

Ellen Bush, St. Joseph's Academy, Baton Rouge, LA
Kim Clary, Roseburg High School, Roseburg, OR
Martin Funk, New Trier High School, Evanston, IL
Lawrence Iles, Madison West High School, Madison, WI
Victoria Miles, Abigail Adams Middle School, Weymouth, MA
Kimberly Rubin, Washington Irving Middle School, Springfield, VA
Craig Russell, University of Illinois Laboratory High School, Urbana, IL
Melanie Smith, Manhattan Village Academy, New York, NY
Michael Weingarden, Newbury Park High School, Newbury Park, CA

Information and an application for the 2010 Illuminations Summer Institute are forthcoming. An announcement will be made in Bright Ideas after the first of the year regarding application availability.

Brain Teaser
Think you're good at arithmetic? Try your hand at this maximum multiplication (PDF) problem.

By the Numbers
When is the best time to find an opponent on Calculation Nation^TM? More than one-quarter of all players visit the site between noon and
3 p.m.

Subscribe
Click here to stay up-to-date with the latest Illumination's happenings!

Forward to a Friend
Please forward Bright Ideas to interested colleagues. You could be entered for a chance to win a book from the NCTM Navigation series.