SamizdatMath

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

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

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

Okay, phrens, you're teaching your students how to round numbers and this is what you are NOT going to do: "Students, today we're going to learn how round numbers to the nearest hundreds. To round a number to the hundreds, start by placing your finger on the number furthest to the left (places finger on number) and then look over to the right and then sing this song, "If it's less than 4 or smaller, round it down; if it's 5 or greater, then go right up!" (If you'll pardon the pun.) Then give yo

This is a set of lesson plans with an awesome set of 10 different "Mystery Number" activities. Seriously, do you want a FECKING GOOD way to transform what appears to be a really boring lesson ("Here's how you round off two digit numbers, kiddies!') into a lesson that includes reasoning, hypothesis testing, problem solving AND collaboration! Ten different booklets: a "Sample" to demonstrate to your students, plus 9 more for them to work on individually or collaboratively. AND there's a FECKING

This activity came about because my students get really bored with rounding off decimals for no particular reason. I’m sure you’ve seen these dumb “exercises” where kids get a bunch of random numbers and then are told to round them off to the nearest thousandth, hundredth or tenth, and really, who cares? 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

This is an activity I’ve done with my 5th, 6th and 7th graders to help them understand the importance of “thinking” before rounding off a number. You know, some of us (not you, of course) teach rounding as a “rule” and our students blindly go off rounding numbers without thinking about the implication of doing so. These two activities are designed to impress upon your students that when they round off a number, they should do it with a certain amount of forethought, because if they blindly follo

This is a short activity with specific instructions that deals with the misconception that the decimal point is the "center" of the base ten system. The reality is that the decimal point has two functions, one of which is to act as a "pointer" to the ones place, which is the actual divider of the place value chart. This goes a long way towards explaining to your students why there is no "opposite" of the ones place: it is the actual center from which the decimals and whole numbers originate. Th

These are highly unusual puzzles that are a great way to practice place value while stimulating your students' abilities in deductive reasoning. Each puzzle is set up as an "acrostic" that has to be filled in vertically and horizontally. The "beginner" puzzles are simple to solve, but they are valuable in that they help students to stop thinking of assembling place value by "order" (such as ".8 + .04 = .84," instead of alternating ".04 + .8 = .84") There are 20 different puzzles that use ones a

These are highly unusual puzzles that are a great way to practice place value while stimulating your students' abilities in deductive reasoning. Each puzzle is set up as an "acrostic" that has to be filled in vertically and horizontally. The "beginner" puzzles are simple to solve, but they are valuable in that they help students to stop thinking of assembling place value by "order" (such as "80 + 4 = 84," instead of alternating "4 + 80 = 84") There are 20 different puzzles that use ones and tens

It's wild, it's crazy, it's Jack Gabarino! Great for enhancing your students' problem solving skills.... Machina! Machina! Machina!

Greetings friend & fellow educator, Here we go again: just when you thought you had everything fixed up and all your ducks lined up in a neat little row, I’m back to give you some straight talk about place value, because, as I’m fond of saying, you’re teaching it wrong. Not only are you teaching it wrong, but you probably don’t even understand much of it yourself. Oh, you thought you knew everything, just because you bought a few games and did some random stuff with those silly “foldables” th

How much Cash is in that Stash? If you've ever struggled with finding a fun and effective way to teach the distributive property of multiplication over addition and subtraction, this is the activity for you. Using the example of a suitcase full of dollar bills, students will learn how to effectively count the cash in groups by dividing up the cash into smaller rectangular arrays, whose products can be combined to find a solution. This activity includes a sample problem, specific teaching instru

Here's something for you to try out in this newest of years: a 4 clue number puzzle which utilizes multiples, consecutive numbers, yadda, yadda. Cut n' Serve! Updated for 2019 (because the solution is 2019.....) Another fine product brought to you by SamizdatMath!

By the Digits is a fully interactive activity to teach your students about place value, regrouping, addition and estimation. Simply tap the "round" number and a random number will appear in the "digit" column. Write that digit in the ones or tens place. Continue for 7 rounds, add up the ones and tens and see how close to 100 you got. This comes in a "demo" version, which is a single board, and a "competition version" where two teams can compete against one another (mad shoutout to Karol who sug

"By The Digits" is a game I developed where students take get a series of numbers and decide whether to place them in the tenths or hundredths place; at the end of 7 rounds, they add up the tenths and hundredths to get as close to 1.00 as possible. This is an interactive version for the SmartBoard. Pressing each digit under "round" selects a new digit from 0 - 9. After pressing the button, write down whether the number should go in the tenth or hundredths place. At the end of 7 rounds, add up t

Ben and Ilene are having an argument: they are looking at a number line with a 0 on one end, and 1 million on the other end. The question is: where would 1 thousand be? Ben & Ilene have different insights into the problem: Ben says that 1,000 is a large number and so is a million, so it must be close to that side. Ilene says that 1 thousand is much smaller than 1 million, and it belongs closer to 0. Is either of them correct, or is one of them "more correct" than the other? I've included 5 exam

Tired of the old "make a flat" game? Do you want your kids to enjoy learning about and using place value? Close to a Flat challenges children to think about place value when planning strategy to win a game: in 5 rounds a student chooses between cubes and rods to get as close to making a flat as possible, or in 6 rounds, choosing cubes, rods and flats to make a thousand cube. This game includes puzzles for kids to take home, as well as mats to keep track of cubes, rods and flats. There is also a

Number Snakes is a game that develops strategies dealing with place value, numeration, seriation and proportionality. Students choose two cards to make a double digit number, name it, and then decide on which "band" of a snake it should go. However, as more bands of the snakes are filled in, the game becomes more difficult, as careful attention must be paid to how far apart each number should be. There are 7 different levels of the game, from filling in 3 spaces, to filling in 8 spaces, as wel