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

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

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

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!

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 same as "Squito" Addition Subtraction but the game uses multiplication and division instead. I invented this game quite by accident: it combines Boggle© with numbers but with a twist: you have a choice of numbers, but the goal is to make an equation that is "as true as possible." Instead of taking a set of cards and then swapping them out until you get an actual equation, students move around a set of numbers to optimize their solution. For example, if you have the digits 7, 3, 0, 8

I invented this game quite by accident: it combines Boggle© with numbers but with a twist: you have a choice of numbers, but the goal is to make an equation that is "as true as possible." Instead of taking a set of cards and then swapping them out until you get an actual equation, students move around a set of numbers to optimize their solution. For example, if you have the digits 1, 2, 4, 4, 6 and 9, and are making a 2 digit + 2 digit = 2 digit equation, what's the closest you can get to a "tru

The concept is simple: add two adjacent hexagons to find the sum and fill in the hexagon ABOVE them, and subtract two adjacent hexagons to fill in the difference in the hexagon BELOW them! Sounds easy, right? Well, maybe not: it's not like you can just start in the middle row and move up and down: to solve it, you have to locate the right place to start, which may be a row up or down, or near the top or bottom. As you fill in each of the solutions, more and more clues emerge, and eventually th

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 to give you a jolt of color without using up all your ink! There are also single page and double page formats to save enough more

This is not the worst 15 minutes of your life, but if you're teaching division, it will confirm that you're probably doing your students a great disservice if they're not dealing with division problems on a regular basis that have remainders, and, more importantly, depending on the context, the remainder can be used to round the answer up, round it down, be discarded in its entirety or absabadutely must be included in the answer. I know it's all confusing, but this video uses concrete models (we

Greetings Phrens, This is an experiment for a third grade teacher who is struggling to engage two dyslexic students in the process of answering mathematical story problems. She showed me a set of story problems and described how a teacher had to sit next to the students and read the problems to the students, who then solved them. I thought about this and stated that this seemed like a very hard way to engage these students in problem solving, because the task was really more focused on reading

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

You have a locked briefcase that you want to send to your friend on the other side of the country. You put a lock on it and keep the key around your neck. There is no second key, you can't duplicate this key, and you don't want to send it to your friend, because you're afraid it might get lost or stolen. How does your friend open the case? That's a question that has a lot of relevance to the use of prime numbers! But I digress: this is a set of activities designed to enhance your students' un

This is a collection of 8, count 'em, 8 different "Yogi-isms" that have to do with some mis-statement of a mathematical concept, featuring a writing prompt in the form of a letter to Yogi Berra explaining his mathematical mistake. The statements include: "90% of baseball is mental; the other half is physical." “You have to give 100 percent in the first half of the game. If that isn’t enough, in the second half, you have to give what is left.” When Yogi ordered a pizza, the waitress asked h

Nadia Geddit wanted to get into her building, but she forgot the code to the lock. However, she did remember some clues about the code. These are 5 clues about the code: 1) The sum of the fifth digit and the third digit is 14. 2) The fourth digit is one more than the second digit. 3) The first digit is one less than twice the second digit. 4) The sum of the second and third digit is 10. 5) The sum of all five digits is 30. What 5 digits must Nadia press to make the lock open? How wo

This is a very fun and motivating activity that can be done in 1 - 2 class periods, along with homework. It tells the story of an intern at a website who figures out a way to "hack" his burrito to almost twice the size by ordering "half-portions" of items like red and black beans, chicken and beef, and white and brown rice. The activity looks at how hacking each ingredient adds to the weight of the burrito through the number of additional ounces and how those additional ounces can be written as

Factoring is a very important skill in grades 4 - 8, yet our students are missing some essential skills needed to factor quickly and effectively. One of those skill is taking half of large even number quickly and accurately. This set of games will teach your students how to divide a number in half and then help them practice it until they are automatic. For example, your students may not be able to factor 96 as 3 x 32, but they should be able to perform 2 x 48, which would then become 2 x 2 x 2

You've seen photos of these store bloopers around the web, and say to yourself, "you know, this would be great to use in my class...." but you never have the photo, and you never have the time to photoshop out the brands, fix the colors, crop the image and collect it all in one place. Well, it's all been done for you, and only for the magic price of $4.95, which is nothing when you consider there are 20 different "math fails" that range from simple counting (how many nuggets are printed on that