Learn how to provide math intervention that will make an impact in your classroom while making your life easier!
Then try these FREE ideas, resources, and tips to make them experts. Click here:
Students benefit from hands-on activities to help boost their conceptual understanding of math. This focuses on measuring liquid volume.
Enhance math skills and engage young learners with my free Ten Frame Cards Printable. In this blog post, you’ll discover hands-on activities, games, and strategies for teaching number sense, counting, and problem-solving using ten frames and get a Free Ten Frame Cards printable too.
I recently came across this idea on Pinterest, and I LOVE it. I am sorry, I don't know who the original credit goes to for coming up with this idea is...if you can claim it - let me know :) As we all know, getting students to understand the whole IDEA of a proof is difficult. Then throw in theorems, postulates, reasons, statements UGH...it's too much. The reason I love using Uno to start teaching proof is that you begin the lesson with something students are familiar with - many have played Uno before. The general idea is to give students some number of Uno cards. There is a card for them to begin with [GIVEN] and a card for them to end with [what they are trying to PROVE]. Students are also given some number of additional cards. Then they are asked to find a way to get from the GIVEN card to the PROVE card by playing a hand of Uno. For example, start the students with this layout of cards. Students may realize that if they start with the blue 8, the game could proceed by playing the green 8, then the green 1, the yellow 1, and finally ending with the yellow 3. The cards must be played in this order...if they aren't, the rules of the game are not followed. After a bit, you could introduce the Wild Card - it can be played just like in real Uno...you can use it to change to any color. It helps you move through the game, or in our case, the proof. Students must realize that they can't complete the game without using the Wild Card to change to the green color. After the students understand the idea, you could provide students with extra cards that aren't needed for the proof, but could be included. It isn't WRONG to put them in the proof, but they make the game (or proof) longer than necessary. Or, you might be given an extra card that CAN'T be included in the game - it doesn't fit at all. For example, In this case, the 5 isn't necessary at all. It's tempting to use it after the blue 0, but then you can't proceed without any of the other cards. Notice that we could just use the red 0 and the red 7 to finish the proof. The red 2 isn't necessary, but could be included. The proof would just be longer. After students understand the idea of sequencing the cards, then you can introduce the two column proof format. Want to try using this in your class? Join my email list and I'll send you a packet with everything you need to give it a try! Join My List! I'll email you the packet so you have everything you need to have your best intro to proof EVER! Send me the Uno Packet! We respect your privacy. Unsubscribe at any time.
Create a solid math foundation with these tips for teaching place value in 1st grade. Use these ideas to avoid place value mistakes!
Teaching area and perimeter in your upper elementary math class? This blog post shares a collection of ideas for teaching area and perimeter!
Are you ready to teach your students how to add 8 to a single digit number? Then, let's get hopping! Just as with The 9 Rule, I created two different resources for teaching The 8 Rule
Math is one of my favorite things to teach. Likely because we can actually take the skills learned in the classroom and apply them to real l...
Ready to make math centers work in shorter middle school class periods? Get the details - structure, scheduling, activities, and more!
So how can we best support our beginning ELLs in math? There is a reason I put vocabulary instruction at the top of the list. It simply cannot be ignored if
There are so many ways to use math task cards in upper elementary and middle school. This game uses math task cards with a bit of a twist!
Teaching area is engaging and authentic with this hands-on applied math activity! Students arrange furniture to find the area and perimeter of their house.
Learning the patterns in addition strategy can be tricky for students, especially when using a patterns in addition table. I'm sharing...
make math rotations a favorite time of day, see how to manage and implement math rotations with visuals of each station. Resources for all math rotations.
FREEZE is the math movement game of every elementary teacher’s dreams! It combines academics, social skills, movement, AND fun into one amazing activity.
Find out how I had fun practicing rounding with upper elementary students with hands-on rounding activities and games! Freebies included.
8 tips for teaching area and perimeter lessons to help you guide your students toward deeper area and perimeter understanding and mastery.
Learn different ways to use Spiral Math Resources in your classroom; Including Spiral Math Homework and Spiral Language Homework.
Looking to make your math class more enjoyable and interactive for your students? This post lists and describes five math apps that are great additions to any math classroom. Click through to learn all about them!
Looking for strategies to help make math class more efficient and therefore have a more effective math class for your middle schoolers?
How do you use interactive math notebooks in the secondary classroom? This post gives practical tips for how we use a 3-part INB system in our classes.
Teaching math facts with music and movement? It's possible! Read this post to learn how math chants and songs that make learning fun.
I've got so many great resources for making multiplication facts so much fun for elementary students! Check out my blog post for details!
As a teacher, there is so much to do when it comes to setting up the classroom, that it is hard to know where to start! Over the course of my first six years of teaching middle school math, a few of these classroom projects have become staples in my classroom. In this post, I plan to share a few of these ideas. (1) Assignment Notebook Board The first thing my middle school students do (or should be doing!) when they come to class is fill out their assignment notebooks. With some ruler tape that I found at Office Max, I created this assignment notebook board. The number 1 on each day is for what we do in class. The number 2 on each day is any homework that is assigned. For example the 1 might be "Multiply Fractions" and the 2 might be "Pg 232 hw (due tmw)." (2) Math is Everywhere Board I have written about this project in a few other posts, but it is one of my all time favorites to start the year! I have two bulletin boards in my classroom. This one gets filled with these tiles. Students must show how they see math in the real world on their tile. On the back of their tile, they must write a paragraph explaining how math is seen in the topic that they chose! You can click HERE for a free set of the bulletin board letters! (3) Challenge of the Week Many of you have already seen or tried out the Challenge of the Week in your classroom! I have loved seeing the pictures! Each week, I put up a new challenge problem. They are optional and students have until the end of the day on Thursday to turn it in. Anyone who gets it correct gets a small prize on Friday when we go over the answer! Both the 6th Grade Challenge of the Week Problems and the 8th Grade Challenge of the Week Problems are FREE in my TpT store. Enjoy! (4) Teacher Book Shelf My teacher book shelf took on some major changes recently. I started with this new way of organizing all of my math workshop materials. I decided to organize them more by the type of game, rather than by the topic like I had done in the past. I cleared these shelves off and organized them in these containers that I had ordered a few years ago. If you are looking for the materials and resources that I use for math workshop, be sure to check out my Math Mega Bundle (Upper Elementary/Middle School) and my Math Mega Bundle (8th Grade Math). Below these containers, I have two shelves with labels for Monday through Friday. This is where I put all of my plans and resources that I will be using for the coming week. This has been a useful way to stay organized and prepared throughout the week! As you can see, I am not quite ready for the first week of school... On the bottom of these shelves are my task cards, which very well could be the hardest resource when it comes to organization! I found these containers at Michaels. They have worked out pretty well. I have two sets of task cards that I use throughout each school year for each grade level. I have a regular set of task cards and then a set of enrichment task cards. Each set takes up two of these containers. Teaching two different grades means I end up with 8 of these containers, which is pretty manageable! Check out the links below if you are interested in the task cards for each grade level! 6th Grade Math Task Cards Bundle 6th Grade Math Enrichment Task Cards Bundle 7th Grade Math Task Cards Bundle 7th Grade Math Enrichment Task Cards Bundle 8th Grade Math Task Cards Bundle 8th Grade Math Enrichment Task Cards Bundle (5) Bulletin Board (Number 2) My second bulletin board is filled with some routine-oriented and expectation posters. I made these the last few years. The colored math workshop poster shows where students of each group should be at any given time. The homework data chart is where we record our homework data. As a class, we figure out what percentage of homework we turn in on time each day. Over the course of the year, we graph these and look at trends. It also becomes a fun competition between classes! (6) Bobblehead Collection I started my bobblehead collection a while ago and it has just grown ever since! Students enjoy seeing them and it is a fun way for students to get to know me and my interest in baseball! My wife and I are trying to get to all 30 MLB stadiums, and recently made it to Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. Luckily it was a bobblehead giveaway, so the Kevin Appier Royals bobblehead is the most recent addition to the collection!
Learn different ways to use Spiral Math Resources in your classroom; Including Spiral Math Homework and Spiral Language Homework.
Pre-algebra and algebra students will use common snack foods to learn about variables and expressions. Includes step-by-step directions.
We were so delighted to be guest bloggers at Kids Math Teacher. We just completed this activity with our students this week and are excited to share it with you. There are many variations that can be done with this activity to soot your grade level. Wendie and I teach third grade and the students did an amazing job. First, we began by discussing what a line of symmetry is and completing half of a symmetrical monster. Then, students created their own symmetrical monsters using construction paper (monster colors). Here are some examples created by our kiddos. Now for the real fun part. Students added symmetrical details and googly eyes to their monsters. Finally, they used descriptive words and action words to write a descriptive paragraph about their monster. Possible variations could be having students add specific geometric shapes and/or fractions like 3/5 of the shapes need to be squares. Look how cool it all comes together. The students were very creative in their monster symmetry creations and their paragraphs. We hope your students will enjoy as much as ours did. For your free monster symmetry lesson just click on the pic.
Remove One is an awesome probability game to help middle school math students explore probability concepts and strategy!
I love teaching math with a deck of cards! It is simple, the games are usually a lot of FUN, and a deck of cards is accessible to almost every child out there. I have shared plenty of card games in the past, but today I wanted to share two more of my favorites for […]
What is an array? Why should we use arrays? An array is a way of arranging objects in groups or columns. In math, we generally see arrays with rows and columns of dots, like this: However,
So you have a student (or two, or three) who have math gaps in skills from previous grade levels. It can be overwhelming to consider that you need to teach a
Subitizing is the foundation for number sense and mental math. Learn about common mistakes teachers make when teaching subitizing.
Hi friends! I'm super excited to share with you how I made graphing in Kindergarten fun and independent this year! Every year my kids find graphing super fun and engaging but teaching JK/SK (that’s Pre-K/K for my American friends) it was always hard to make this an independent centre. This year I found a solution that worked well! Here is how I taught it: Day 1: Learning Goals & Success Criteria First I introduce the learning goal "We are learning to make graphs". Then we start by talking about the first step in the success criteria: I know I can do this when I can make a question. I give them a few examples first then have the kids share and added their questions to a chart. Then I typed up the questions and laminated a couple copies to keep in our question folder so that the students can reference them if they need help coming up with a question. Day 2: Make a Question and Collect & Graph the Data On the second day, I introduce the rest of the success criteria I can collect and record data on my graph. Data=information Sidenote: I followed some of the kids around as they graphed the first couple of days and asked them questions like "What do you need to do first?" and "How do we record _____'s answer?" etc. to uncover some student thinking. I took pictures and notes as I followed along and then printed a couple out as exemplars for the success criteria "I can collect and record the data on my graph." I can answer questions about my graph using the words most, least and the same. Then we practiced making our graph. I was going to start with a concrete graph (in theory that might be better) but I have a higher group of kiddos than usual this year and I wanted to introduce the graphing papers that we they would be using at the graphing centre so I could open it that day. So I put this graphing paper up on the smart board and we went through the steps together. First we read the question together and I showed them how to trace the question. Then we picked three colours for the choices. We talked about we could do a small scribble with crayon to indicate our colour choices if copying colour words from the word wall was too tricky. I also told them that even if they can copy the colour word to do a small dash of the colour with crayon underneath to help them remember what is what. Then I modelled how to ask the question to each student in the class and add the data to the graph. At the end we talked about which colour was the most popular, least popular and if any were the same. I left out this paper with clipboard, pencils and crayons for the kids to try. Here is an example of a completed "What is your favourite colour?" page. I told the kids that if there were no colours that were the same they could either put an X or write "none". The kids also used these "Photo Class List"'s to keep track of who they've asked. As they asked their question and graphed their data, they crossed out the person they asked. On the third day we made our first concrete graph. First we reviewed that the first step was to make a question. I told them that the question we are going to answer and graph today is "What is your favourite animal?" I then quickly taped 5 different animal pictures around the room. Then I had the students move to the picture of their choice. Then we called 1 group at a time and graphed the kids on the carpet. We have the perfect carpet for this as our carpet is a grid! We had the person at the front hold the animal picture, took a picture with the iPad and showed the image on the SMARTBoard. Then we talked about which one was the most, the least and the same. Here is a sample of an favourite animal graph they could complete at centre time: On the fourth day we made another concrete graph. This time we graphed siblings in our class! We followed the same steps as favourite animal but I taped the signs for "sisters only", "brothers only", "brothers and sisters" and "no siblings" instead. The rest was the same as the third day :) On the fifth day we created our birthday graph! First I had some of my kiddos write the months of the year for me. Then I put them up on the bulletin board. Then I printed out a square picture of each of my kiddos and mounted it on black construction paper. Then we added the pictures during whole group math time and we talked about which month has the most birthdays, which month has the least birthdays and if any of the months have the same. Next time I would have the students write their birth date on a whiteboard and hold it in from of them when I take the picture so that I could easily get that information from this graph. I also used this graph on my graphing wall and put it under "I can answer questions about my graph using the words most, least and the same." Then I put a velcro dot on top of each column and the words most, least and same on a velcro strip underneath. This way, the kids can come and practice identifying which month has the most, which month has the least and which months are the same number of birthdays on the graphing wall. If you would like to try the pre-filled favourite animal graphing sheets click on the button below to download them for free :) All of the printables above can be found in my newest product, Graphing for Little Learners! You can click on the image below to check it out in my TPT store :) My kids are still loving graphing and it is a popular centre every day. How do you teach graphing in Kindergarten? I would love to hear your fun ideas!
Ready to make math centers work in shorter middle school class periods? Get the details - structure, scheduling, activities, and more!
It's always fun to find division games math teachers AND students will enjoy. These are a twist on some classics and new games to teach division too!
When you teach simple probability, it seems like you have to strike a balance between showing students how probability works and getting them to understand the math behind it. This topic lends itself to a
FREE 5th grade math pacing guide! This math pacing guide includes the rationale behind the pacing as well as links to freebies, blog posts, and resources.
10 inexpensive rewards to use in your middle school class.
We all know and love Kahoot, right? If you do not know about Kahoot then we have a few blog posts with tips and ideas to get you up to sp...
