GeoGebra gives students opportunities to explore math concepts visually. This is a good project to give a class so students can write or speak about what they are noticing and possibly figure out the a number algorithm on their own. Expressing what you see and what patterns may emerge goes beyond just memorizing a formula or algorithm on how to solve it. You can create your own examples to fit your lesson or choose something already made from their library. I took examples from their library and created a few mini-lessons.
Lesson Ideas
Click the button to see how multiplication of fractions works with GeoGebra using the multiplication area model. You can lead into keywords such as the word "of" for multiplication. Students can also analyze what is happening in the picture and write about it using pencil/paper or technology. Students may also explain how to solve it on their own rather than just teaching and memorizing the algorithm to get there.
A similar topic will be to look at fraction addition and get them noticing on what they see. You can also take this a step further and look at both addition and multiplication together. Students can compare and contrast by speaking or writing the two diferent operations. Many students get the addition and multiplication fraction operations mixed up.
This example is looking at volume and what the number really means (how many 1 foot cubes, 1 inch cubes, etc.). This is another opportunity of what a student notices in the visual representation in writing or speaking when we talk about our answers being labeled as cubic unit. It is that deeper understanding of why we use the formula l x w x h.