SamizdatMath

Here's the deal: you want your students to practice rounding off numbers so you give them one of these rando "worksheets" with lots of numbers saying "round off to the nearest ten," "round off to the nearest hundred," yadda yadda yadda and they do it and forget about it and it's just a superficial way to approach this important topic. This takes the whole topic and reverses it, making it far more interesting and useful: each booklet starts by asking "When rounded off to the nearest thousand, it

Here’s a set of puzzles that will promote the use of “backwards thinking.” That is, the technique is to look at where you want to “end” and then work backwards step by step in order to get to the beginning. Some people refer to this as “guess and check,” but that is incorrect: that technique involves putting in possible solutions and then starting from the beginning to see if the solution is correct. Eh, no, that’s not quite the way it works.In working backwards, you get to the beginning by work

This is a second set of 10 3-D spatial problem solving puzzles that use 2 - 3 of the seven Soma pieces. There are three different kinds of puzzles: Basic Puzzles: These are puzzles which show the solution to the puzzle in three different colors. Students have to locate the proper pieces and assemble them as shown in the diagram. Intermediate Puzzles: These are puzzles where the solver is told which 2 - 3 pieces to use, but not how they fit together. Students locate the individual pieces and th

This is a set of activities designed to introduce students to a technique for finding the number of paths on a matrix from corner to another. In the beginning problems, students are permitted to use any technique they like, including the "brute force" method of tracing each and every path. Fortunately, for the first couple of problems, this is too confusing, but as the grid gets larger and larger, there are more and more paths to trace, which can get very confusing. From here, a new technique i

This is a set of 2 activity sheets that use a minimum amount of text so that students can engage in solving word problems without the obstacle of decoding dull sentences. The problems are tricky not because of the wording, but because a) there is "interleaving," which means that depending on the problem, the student may have to perform addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. In addition, some of the division problems have remainders that have to be interpreted. There are 4 problems p

Note: There is now a video tutorial that goes with this activity: Division With Remainders: Just Do It (RIGHT!) Your students are "learning" about division, and if you're using a really, really cruddy curriculum, then they probably all sound like this: "I have 24 blah blah blahs which I'm packing into cases of (choose some divisor of 24.) How many cases will I be able to make. This, my friends, is a lackadaisical and churlish approach to teaching students about solving problems with division.

Here's the deal: you want your students to practice addition and subtraction, and you'd like to do more than give them another cruddy worksheet, and you want EVERYONE to be challenged! You also want to be able to customize the activities so that each student gets the appropriate support and challenge, but you don't want to print ten different worksheets! Here's what I came up with: give students problems where they have to add AND subtract in the same problem. Example: What are 2 numbers that

This activity came about because my students are endlessly interchanging the words “factors,” “multiples,” and “divisors.” Instead of just having them copy the definitions out of some dumb book, I thought it would be better to have them actually use the different terms to solve mystery number problems. So I adapted another set of activities that I developed for my younger students and came up with this! But I have another item on my agenda: one of the things I have always advocated is giving c

As you know, one of the things I have always advocated is giving children math problems that are interesting and challenging. I know, I know, this flies directly in the face of “well, if we give them hard things to do, then they’ll get discouraged and think math is hard.” Well, the truth is this: math is hard! And let me say another thing: anybody, young or old, experienced or not, is either lying or has never done “real math” if they think it is “easy.” In this activity, I’m pushing you to cha

As you know, one of the things I have always advocated is giving children math problems that are interesting and challenging. I know, I know, this flies directly in the face of “well, if we give them hard things to do, then they’ll get discouraged and think math is hard.” Well, the truth is this: math is hard! And let me say another thing: anybody, young or old, experienced or not, is either lying or has never done “real math” if they think it is “easy.” In this activity, I’m pushing you to cha

Greetings 3-D fans: this is a second edition of puzzles designed to be used with Snap Cubes or Multi-Link Cubes (NOT Unifix Cubes, unless you purchase a separate zero-gravity diode, which is currently out of stock....) We live in an era where children spend the majority of their time at home or in school looking at a screen: they swipe, tap and click their way through lessons or activities, and what do they get out of it? Bubkus! These are puzzles designed to develop and improve your students

You want to have your kids practice addition and subtraction problems, with and without re-grouping, but you’re sick of the contrived “word problems” in your textbook, or find the usual activites like “Scoot” dull and repetitive. So here’s something new: addition and subtraction puzzles that are creative, open-ended and, dare I say it, “challenging!” “One, Some or None?” is a game I learned from my graduate school professor, David Fuys, who learned it from another teacher, who invented it to g

This is a collection of classic and soon-to-be classic math and strategy games that can be played by students in grades 1 - 3. Each one has been beautifully layer out with gorgeous typography and NO CUTESY DRAWINGS! This is serious math for serious kids. Not really, but there’s a lot of playful stuff here that will challenge and entertain. Included in this collection: The Golden Apple Game The Rotten Apple Game Westbury: A strategy game where you make numbers from toothpicks. Sumo: A game w

This is the ultimate and penultimate guide to teaching the area of a triangle. If you're teaching your students the formula base x height ÷ 2 and handing them a bunch of problems where you show the base and height and have them do the rest, well, you're just wasting your time, and miseducating your students. Smooth move, Ferguson... Here's are three essential things you should be teaching your students about finding the area of a triangle, some or all of which you are not teaching: 1) Every tr

If you're going to teach your students about how to find the area of a parallelogram (actually, it's technically a "rhomboid," because a parallelogram could also be a rectangle....) then you're most likely going to doing something bad like "multiply the base times the height," give a couple of dumb problems and call it a day. That's NO way to teach geometry, more or less math, or anything for that matter! This is a collection of geometric "dissections" where students cut out rhomboids, and, us

This is one of an occasional series of mondo-tough problems that use small numbers (or no numbers at all!) Here’s how it works: we all teach our students how to take a group of numbers and calculate the range, mean, median and mode. Seems pretty simple, and our students tired of it damned quickly. Can you blame them? It’s just “do what the teacher told me to do, and then write the answer here...” kind of busywork. But what if we were to switch the tables on our students: let’s give them t

Here’s what I’m throwing down in this activity: many of us are teaching surface area and volume of rectangular prisms, but other than memorizing a set of formulas, our students are not getting a whole lot out of it. Of course, you can blame that obsessive focus we have on standardized testing for our compulsion to teach - test - move on to the next topic, but c’mon, you can do better than that, right? This is a short activity that you can do in one period that will not only help your studen

Here's the deal: you want your kids to do challenging puzzles with interesting shapes (I'm talking to >you<, pattern blocks!) but the problem is that many of these puzzles are waaaay too hard for your pre-K through 1st graders. Even a 2 piece pentomino puzzle would require sorting through 66 combinations of 12 different pentomino pieces before locating the correct pair to make the shape. This is an advanced version of my other set of pentomino challenges, Pentomino Challenges for the Earl

Are you still teaching Roman numerals? Really? Are you still living in the XIIIth century, or what? Us XXIst century teachers know that in order to teach Roman numerals, you have to have a little bit o' fun added. This packet is the best way to do that! Here's what you get: I) A sample chapter from my upcoming rant "Place Value: You're Teaching It Wrong." Yes, you are, so don't deny it. This is a look at why Roman numerals are such a pain in the neck and compares them to Hindu-Arabic numeral

In this activity, students build a device that allows them to classify angles as acute, obtuse, right, straight and reflex, and estimate their measures using "landmark angles." The template can be cut out and assembled in about 8 minutes using scissors, glue stick, a hole puncher and a paper fastener. I've included step-by-step photographic instructions on how to cut out and assemble the device. Included in this activity is a set of 12 angle classification and estimation "clue cards" which stu