Melanie Schultz

This is a project for students who have learned dimensional analysis. Students create a country by naming it, naming its currency, and deciding on the exchange rate from their currency to 1 Euro. Then, they plan an opening party for their country, converting the prices of various objects to their own currency. Last, they create an advertisement for their party on a regular sized sheet of paper. I used this project as an assignment over spring break. It could easily be changed to a group pro

This worksheet lets students explore an interesting property of polynomials - if you take the coefficients of (x+1) raised to consecutively higher powers, you'll end up with Pascal's triangle! Students who haven't seen Pascal's triangle enjoy finding patterns in the triangle, and students who has seen it before are amazed at its relationship to this polynomial. The activity could easily be extended to a discussion/exploration of the binomial theorem.

A week-long math project that involves making an informative math poster about a subject in math that the student feels comfortable about. Students need to do some writing and critical thinking about what makes some concepts harder than others, and get to spend time on a subject that they feel good about, giving them some much-needed math confidence. The project is 2 pages long, and includes detailed instructions, an agenda to guide the students every day for 5 weeks, and a rubric for grading.

A graphic organizer for students to fill in with information about the basic mathematics properties (Associative, Commutative, etc). My students loved having this in front of them - they didn't have to copy down names of properties, they had plenty of space to write examples, and had no trouble referencing the sheet later on.

This review sheet works well at the end of a transformations unit. It includes pictures of different Transformers, which have had one of the four different transformations (reflections, rotations, translations, and dilations) performed on them. Students need to name which transformation was performed on each Transformer, and describe what happened to the Transformer under that transformation. Students like it because the picture is so silly, because they know Transformers from the movie comin

This is the student handout for a week-long project. Students are expected to make a packet of crosswords/word finds related to math curriculum. The project includes a week-long agenda for the students to follow, instructions for how to make an individual crossword or word find, and a grading rubric.

A graphic organizer students can use on their first day learning geometry vocabulary. My students loved having all the information right in front of them in an organized fashion, and had no trouble referencing it later on. The vocabulary is organized into sections (undefined terms, symbols, etc), making it even easier to use.

A test on factoring polynomials. This directly corresponds to my Factoring Polynomials Review Sheet. The test covers find the GCF (Greatest Common Factor) of numbers and monomials, factoring trinomials where a = 1, factoring trinomials where a>1, factoring the difference of two squares, and factoring completely.

A page of questions requiring students to solve systems of equations using the Substitution Method. Students could get additional practice by trying to solve each system using a different method, and checking their answers.

3 different versions of a test on order of operations and signed numbers. The tests are all the same difficulty, and are a great assessment of a beginning unit in 8th-10th grades.

A cute activity requiring students to write the "opposite" of a given statement. The premise is that today is Opposite Day, and the students need to say certain phrases, but to get their point understood, they have to say the opposite of what they mean. This sheet gave my students a good understanding of negation in logic.

This is an informative handout/worksheet on Order of Operations. The first page contains an introduction to Order of Operations, including an explanation of PEMDAS and the problems with the acronym as it is right now. The next page includes a few sample problems and some questions to see if a student has read and understood the first page. This word document could easily be extended to include more Order of Operations examples.

This handout is a Math Questionnaire for students on their first day of school. It asks students several questions about how they do in math - do they think they're "good" at math? Why or why not? It's a great way to see how your students feel towards math, and get a sense of what they do and don't like about math. A section at the bottom allows students to tell you some of their other interests outside of school. This was particularly helpful to me since I knew what sort of real-world exam

A very thorough review sheet for a test on factoring. The sheet covers find the GCF (Greatest Common Factor) of numbers and monomials, factoring trinomials where a = 1, factoring trinomials where a>1, factoring the difference of two squares, and factoring completely. Each area is separated and includes sample questions.

This is one of the first homeworks I use when reviewing fractions from the bottom up. Students need to find the prime factors of numbers, and explore divisibility rules for different numbers. It could easily be developed into a class activity by adding more examples and expanding the number block on the bottom half of the page to include all the numbers from 1-100. The final question asks students to do some critical thinking about prime and composite numbers, and is a good way to assess whet

This is 4 versions of a test on Solving Equations (including, on each, 2 questions on absolute value, that could easily be rewritten as 2 other equations to solve, or removed altogether). The test includes 3 different methods for solving each equation - using a picture of a scale, using a "guessing game" (verbally), and algebraically.

This worksheet is for students to organize different English expressions for the different inequalities (less than, greater than, less than or equal to, greater than or equal to). It includes a graphic organizer split into 4 columns, and various expressions that the students must organize into the appropriate column. It works well as a Do Now, and could easily be adapted into a longer activity, a group activity, or a homework assignment.

This is a 2 page review sheet for solving systems of equations. The first page asks students to solve problems using a particular method - substitution, combination, or graphing. The second page allows students to choose their own method, letting them practice looking for clues as to which method will work best.

This is a hands-on activity for students studying geometry. The sheet has 2 triangles on it and a place to record the measures of the interior angles of each one. Students practice working with a protractor, measuring accurately, comparing results with their group, and discussing human error. Eventually, they should see that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is always 180. Students should be pushed to see why this must be true, instead of taking it for granted, and coming up with