SamizdatMath

FACT: Students need more practice solving subtraction problems. FACT: This collection has lots of subtraction problems. FACT: Not all subtraction problems are the same: some are "take away," some are "let's compare one with another," some are "I have something and took away this, now I have this...." This is a collection of over 200 different "Busy Bee Hive" puzzles where students practice subtraction in a context that is fun and thoughtful. That is, yes, they get lots of opportunities to do "ta

Description FACT: Students need more practice solving subtraction problems. FACT: This collection has lots of subtraction problems. FACT: Not all subtraction problems are the same: some are "take away," some are "let's compare one with another," some are "I have something and took away this, now I have this...." This is a collection of over 200 different "Busy Bee Hive" puzzles where students practice subtraction in a context that is fun and thoughtful. That is, yes, they get lots of opportuniti

Many, MANY years ago I had a student in a 7th grade math class who was working on some kind of assignment that required solving the problem 25 ÷ 8. He called me over and pointed out that there must be some kind of error in the problem, because 8 does not go into 25. Being the budding klugarsch that I was, I remarked that, in fact, 8 did “go into” 25 (if you mean how many times can you count up by 8s before getting past 25), but that it didn’t do so without leaving a remainder. Which got me thin

To quote Charles Dickens (from The Pickwick Papers) “What fresh misery is this?” This is what happens when you have time on your hands and you’re thinking to yourself, “well, how can I bring bles’sed torment unto my students this week?” Many (many) years ago I had a student in my sixth grade class (you probably had them) who would respond to any “do now” problem with a quick look and the brag “oh, this is so easy!” And then after fumbling his way through 3 or 4 methods, all featuring a lapse of

Here’s the problem with teaching any kind of technique in mathematics: once you have kids practice it, they discard all the other techniques they know, even if the ones they discard are faster, more efficient and more accurate. Such is the case with teaching “stacking” of addition problems. Sure, it’s a great skill to have, but is it always necessary? I say this: based on some statistic I ran, between 70 - 80% of all addition problems with two addends don’t need to be stacked. Yet we act as if

This is a rounding game I developed for a colleague at my school: I am a working teacher (as I have been for the past 37 years) so I know stuff. And here’s what I know: games are fun, learners like to play games, and games should exercise the learner’s mind in a variety of ways. Which is how I developed the “rounding” and “un-rounding” games. The “Rounding Game” is your basic bingo game: you turn over two cards, round off the number to the nearest ten, find that rounded number on the bingo board

GaOn is a multi-digit addition/subtraction strategy game that can be played in different ways. Players take turns selecting cards and attempt to form an equation that satisfies the conditions written on the challenge card. Includes game boards, challenge cards, recording sheets and detailed instructions. SamizdatMath does not use or endorse the use of "cutesy" clip art.

BY SPECIAL REQUEST! For those of you who enjoyed Coin KenKen and Ultra Coin KenKen, I know bring you TURBO COIN KENKEN: a 5 x 5 grid with half dollars, quarter dollars, dimes, nickels and pennies to arrange on a grid so that the values equal to the shaded in area, and all coins appear once in each column and row. 5 puzzles, 5 answer sheets. Happy Problem Solving to All!

79 89 99 119? 129? Take 2: 134 124 114 84? 74? Do your students struggle to count by 10s across 100? If they're doing mental math, then they probably will at one time or another. So why not help them practice this so they don't say things like "75, 85, 95, uh, uh, 105?" This is a "three-fer" - you get the group game "roller coaster" where a group of students compete cooperatively to count up and down by tens between a bottom and top number. For example, the first students says 78, the next one

This "product" is an exercise in the form of a "lightly" competitive game that uses addition and subtraction on the number line (which was invented in 1685 by the mathematician John Wallis) that students can play in any number of configurations (pairs, triplets, etc.) and in any number of ways (rolling a single die, rolling 2 dice, using the numbers individually or in combination, etc.) There are versions that use 3, 4, 5 and 6 rolls. There is a number line under each game for your students prac

Are you sick and tired of drilling & killing your kids on the combinations of 10 and just saying, "okay, there's nothing fun about this, so let's just move on." Sorry, I've got to call BS on that. Because learning combinations of 10 is also an opportunity for your students to do some problem solving, do some algebraic thinking, as well as make many, many mistakes. These are NOT worksheets! They are puzzles and are designed to be "hands on" and "manipulative." That is, your students will work w

Okay, you're teaching your kids how to do two and three column addition.... WHAT A SNOOZE! I promise you, this is going to be fun! Here's how it works: you've taught your students about regrouping/carrying in multi-column addition, and they've done a few problems and you want them to have a little more experience with it while doing some deep thinking. This is the activity for you! This collection of "ink blot addition puzzles" will engage your students in a completely different way, because

This is the one and only collection of "MadHard" 'puzzlas' that I have been collecting, editing and finally, answering for more than a decade. Each one is designed to test the mathematical meddle of your kids, from 3rd through 8th grade. Are they hard? Oh, some are sooooo hard that they even stumped mathematicians! Others are a little less hard, but they're all pretty unique and fun and the contexts are nothing like you've ever seen before. Here are some examples: • A cute baby dressed as a tac

I KNOW this is going to come up on every search of the novel "The Outsiders," but don't blame me - it was Peggy Kaye who came up with this simple and easy division partitioning game where pairs of kids draw between 10 and 25 Xs on a piece of paper, then throw out anywhere from 1 to 5 fingers, add them (the fingers) together and use that as a divisor to partition the Xs into groups by circling them. The player with the fewest "outsiders" is declared the winner. Easy peasy, fun game, right? WRONG!

This is one of a series of activities that helps children “break down” numbers. One of the things that I’ve noticed about mathematics curricula is that there is a lot of focus on putting numbers together, but not enough on breaking numbers apart. Perhaps it’s because breaking numbers apart is a lot harder to teach and learn; after all, addition is commutative, and it’s sort of fun, because you get more (except when you’re using negative numbers.) But in order for children to learn how to do thin

This is Max Forstat; she owns a building which has 4 apartments per floor. There are 6 floors in the building. She decides to number the apartments from 1 to 24, starting from the ground floor. Apartments 1 through 4 are on the first floor, 5 - 8 on the second, and so on. How would you figure out which floor each apartment is located? This activity gets students involved in performing division with and without remainders, and then using the remainder to determine the floor and location of the ap

This is a set of 48 different coin puzzles: 24 of them show a piggy bank, and the student adds up the total and records it. The other 24 show a piggy bank with a coin missing, and the total amount in the piggy bank; the student has to figure out the missing coin. Those are "missing addend" problems in that the student knows the partially filled amount and the total and has to find the missing piece. This is formatted both as individual "task cards" and worksheets - I'd prefer you use them as ta

This is the same as Number Logic Puzzles Silly Creatures with a Valentines theme, which should really motivate your students! This is a fun little booklet that your students can put together in about 3 minutes and we’ll really give them some fun working logically - and because this is something you purchased from me, your kids will also have a chance to make their own puzzles to share with one another. Ain’t that cool? Comes in b//w and color booklets - the color booklets have been formatted t

This is a set of activities that focus on helping first and second graders memorize the doubles from 1 - 10, with special focus on the "hard doubles" of 7, 8 and 9. There are two different games, and 20 different puzzles involving "number searches" where students find a number and its double nearby. Students also practice writing doubling and halving equations. There is also a set of "locate and calculate" assessments where students locate a doubling equation and then record it.

This is a collection of 95, yes, you heard it correctly, 95 different "equation search" puzzles that target different kinds of computational strategies. There are actually 15 or so different puzzle types, with 6 different iterations (that is, same puzzle with different numbers.) So if your students need additional practice, you can have them do more of them. Actually, I've automated all these puzzles to generate random numbers, but that' another matter. For example, there is a search sheet where