FAQ
Subscribing is easy – and you’ll be among the first to know when new materials are posted! To subscribe to the email list, visit this page and enter your email address.
To download materials, look for the blue links throughout the blog. To keep it simple, the links are generally the name of the file.
Nearly everything on my blog will work in both PowerPoint and Google Slides. If you are using Google Slides, then after you download the file, simply save it into your google drive. From inside google drive you can then open the file and play it with google slides. In 2018, I began using only animations that work in both PowerPoint and Google slides. There are some older materials, like The Animated Multiplication Table and The Maze Hundreds chart, that have advanced animations that do not work in Google Slides, but nearly everything else works perfectly. Simply save it into your google drive, open it with google slides, and then click present.
The Reveal is one of the most important parts of Esti-Mysteries. There is a single answer beneath the reveal box – and you’ll want to show it to your class at the end of the Esti-Mystery. To make sure that it shows, be sure you are playing the presentation. To play the presentation, if you are using PowerPoint, click on “Slide Show” then “From Current Slide.” If you are using Google Slides, click on “view” then “present.”
Esti-Mysteries usually have 4 or 5 clues. You will want those clues to appear one at a time – instead of all at once – so your students can think carefully about each one. This also adds to the fun. If you open the slide and see all 5 clues at the same time, then you are on the right slide, but the slide show isn’t playing yet. Simply play the slide show to make it work. To play the presentation, if you are using PowerPoint, click on “Slide Show” then “From Current Slide.” If you are using Google Slides, click on “view” then “present.” You’ll quickly see how the clues will each appear one at a time when you click.
I hear this exclamation often! Yes, I am constantly gathering new materials for Esti-Mysteries and Estimation Clipboards. I also recycle the materials throughout various materials. A keen eye will sometimes spot something from an Esti-Mystery making a reappearance in an Estimation Clipboard that appears at a different time. I am running out of storage space, but my heart is full of math joy!
I nearly didn’t include this question, but it felt important to me to share. After I started my blog, it slowly began to grow – which meant it became more expensive to host and maintain. After several years I started a new school year and was facing two realities. The first reality was that at that point over 1,000,000 copies of free materials had been downloaded from my blog by educators around the world. I was pleased that my little blog could help so many educators and students. The second reality was that, at that point, I was about 3 months away from having to close down my blog because it was becoming more expensive than the space in our family budget.
I might just write a short book about that some day! I do most of my work in large blocks of time, and I usually start very early on Saturday mornings. A few times each year, I’ll take a writing retreat to create as many materials as I can.
Most of the materials are labeled by grade bands rather than levels. That’s because concepts like estimation do not fit in only some grade levels. To help identify grade level bands most materials, such as Esti-Mysteries, have recommended grade level bands in the blog.
No. They are two different resources. I wrote the multiplication course on YouTube in the summer of 2020 when students had just had a school year interrupted. The multiplication course on YouTube is a set of 156 videos, sorted into chapters that students and teachers can watch to learn about multiplication. It’s completely free, and it’s available to everyone. You can find it on my YouTube channel here.
Separately – the consumable multiplication workbook I wrote, titled “The Multiplication Advantage” is unrelated to the YouTube course. The Multiplication Advantage is a paperback consumable book – meant for each student to have their own copy – that is 150 days of ready-to-use multiplication practice experiences embedded within routines, including self-checking feedback keys. You can learn more about it here.
Hi Steve,
I have subscribed and get your emails with the new estimysteries.
However I cannot seem to access the interactive estimysteries on your website.
What am I doing wrong???
Thanks!
Hi, Nancy. On the website, if you scroll down to the blue links, those are the download links.
Hi Steve! I use a lot of your resources and they are great, so thank you! Question – When playing the Splat slideshow, the reveal slide is not showing. When I go to animations, I can see it’s there so it must be a setting that I need to change. Any ideas?
Thanks!
Hilary
Hi, Hilary. It sounds like you might be using Google Slides? If so I recommend the “Splat for Google Slides” post, which can be found here: https://stevewyborney.com/2018/09/splat-for-google-slides-40-lessons/
All my best,
Steve
Thank you so much for developing such a great resource! I subscribed a couple of years ago and I always recieve the emails telling me the names of new equimysteries that have been posted and the date to find them under, but when I click on the link I am unable to find them. Searching by the date or the name of the mystery does not help either. What am I doing wrong?
Hi, Sarah. Thank you for subscribing to the news letter all this time. If you click on the link (like this one: https://stevewyborney.com/2022/10/170-new-esti-mysteries/
then scroll down to where it says “New This Week.” Below that you’ll see some dates, grade levels, pictures, and a blue link. The blue link is the download link. I hope that helps.
All my best,
Steve