SamizdatMath

Are you teaching the quadratic formula to your students? Are you teaching it the same way you learned it in high school? Or maybe college? Or maybe on the street somewhere? Then you're probably teaching it WRONG AF. It's okay: I've been teaching the quadratic formula WRONG AF for decades. I didn't know it, but I was. It wasn't until one day I was working with a group of my college students and made a mistake that I had a realization: we've been teaching the quadratic formula WRONG AF for decades

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

This is a really cool activity I made for my third graders: the basic idea is this - instead of giving kids a hundred subtraction problems and mindlessly solving them over and over again, why not have the kids make up their own subtraction problem according to the “properties” of the problem - for example, whether or not it requires regrouping (NOT borrowing!), as well as a target range for the answer, and only using certain digits. If you look at my other materials, you know I’m always trying

I know you all love "Task Cards" - so I made these for you, but at the same time, I had to get "snarky." Forgive me..... See all those stoopid questions that show up on Facebook, Instagram, PInterest, Friendster, Tumblr, Twitter, Woof, etc? The ones where they tell you to calculate some easy-peasy problem and then 83% get the wrong answer? Wouldn't that make a great activity for reviewing order of operations, a.k.a. PEMDAS????? So I collected a whole bunch of these, spread them over a few pag

This is an old brain teaser that someone told me, and which I shortened and clarified, as well as added clues for your students to use, as well as three different explanations for how to solve it. Basically, the problem goes like this: you have 7 people who want to find the average of their salaries. The only problem is that no one wants to tell anyone how much they earn. How will you find the average without anybody stating their actual salary? I've run this problem by all my techie type frie

Do you have a set of Geoblocks sitting around in your classroom waiting for someone to do something interesting with them? Have you exhausted the sorting and identifying edges, faces and vertices (or "corners," if you will....)? Do you want something really neat to do with them which will develop your students' abilities to visualize and represent 3 dimensional shapes in 2 dimensions? This is a set of 16 Geoblock "search and sketch" puzzles. Students look at the sheet and find the block which m

This has been very successful for me both as an assessment and an activity that students can do at centers or at home. There are 10 different story problems, and a board with 10 spots to place them: each one states the operation you would use to solve it. Your students cut out the cards, they read the problems and then tape or glue the correct problem with the operation or operations that would be used to solve it. Most are single step problems, but some require two steps. A fun thing to do in c

This is a game that helps your kids do two different things at once: first, they can practice multi-digit multiplication (1 x 2, 2 x 2 and 1 x 3), AND, more important than anything else, they can work on their estimation skills. They also have to do subtraction in order to find out how far they are from their “target” number, so I guess that counts for three things. Actually, they also have to add their scores together, so there’s multi-digit addition as well. So there you have it: one game, f

These cards are meant to be used as a “fishbowl” exercise. That is, each group is designed to elicit certain types of thinking, and your students should do problems from each group. You’ll notice that each group features problems where students have to determine one of the three types of solutions: total elapsed time, starting time and ending time. This is by design: they should know how to do all three (that is, if you believe the Common Core propaganda machine, which I don’t, but I have to..

Here's the task: Put the following fractions in order from least to greatest: 3/7, 1/5, 5/6, 4/7, 7/8, 1/9 and 12/13 Would your students be comfortable doing this task, or would they groan and give up? Would you want your students to attempt this by drawing individual pictures of fractions? Would you want your students to attempt this using a desk full of manipulatives? The first thing you get in this kit is a set of standardized fraction cards that use a hybrid linear model; they are in th

Tired of holding up clocks and having kids shout out the time? This partner game is ideal for kids from 6 - 10 who need to practice reading time on the hour and half hour. Print up these beautiful and clear clock cards, chop 'em up and shuffle, demonstrate the game and off they go! Send a set home for parents to play with their kids.