SamizdatMath

This is the last of this series of task cards using the theme of a "piggy bank" (remember those) to develop understanding and skills using pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. (Sorry fans of the half-dollar and silver dollar...) This is a sorting activity: students take a set of cards, look at the amount stated in the piggy bank and the coins outside and if they match, put it in the "correct" part of the sorting mat (included!) - if it's not a match, put it in the "incorrect" section of the so

Howdy you all! You know, one of the things I love about people who don't know much about math is that they think that there's always one right answer to a math question. Well, there isn't: the reality is that most math questions (even seemingly simple ones like "how much is 2 + 2?") have answers like "well, it depends." In the case of "how much is 2 + 2, it depends on the base system you're working in: if it was base 3, then the answer would be 11 (1 group of 3 and 1 remainder), or it it was bas

This is a collection of task cards where students are given two clues about what coins are inside the piggy bank: the first is the value of the coins, but since there could be many different combinations, there is a second clue, which specifies how many coins the student has to use. Fun! There are two sets of cards: one is in easy-peasy to print black & white, the other is in cutesy colors (pink and light blue.) You can print out the cards, cut and laminate them and have them for the rest of

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.

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

This is a fun little activity that you can do in a class period, or just give for homework, and it will get your kids to think carefully about fractions, most likely beyond the junk that is in whatever textbook you are using. It would also be excellent as an assessment of your students’ basic understanding of how fractions work. The idea is this: do your students have a basic understanding of how fractions work? Do they REALLY? This is how you do it in 5 questions. In questions 1 and 2, we look

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

What goes better with equivalent fractions than ZOMBIES! And what goes better with zombies than Valentine's Day? Each of these ghouls represents a fraction; surrounding them are equivalent fractions with heart-shaped zombie brains that are missing a numerator or denominator. Alas, one of them is a ZOMBIE and cannot be completed! For example, if there is a fraction 1/3 and ?/5 is one of the choices, it can't be completed, because 3rds can't be turned into 5ths. SO MUCH FUN your kids will love i

This packet is my way of serving all masters concerning the implications of summer math work: it has a limited number of activities that are not high stress - in fact, it’s five different games, some classic (Picos, Fermis and Bagels, Salute! & PIG!) and others that will be “new to you” (By the Digits, Close to 100), as well as a geometry puzzle featuring the Sphinx puzzle pieces.  Here’s what you get: • Picos, Fermis and Bagels: This is based on the board game “Mastermind,” which challenges

Do you give summer math work to your students? If so, I imagine it's probably a bunch of those cruddy worksheets that you downloaded off the InterWeb, printed out and told your students to complete for next year's teacher by the beginning of school. You know that your students won't use these, and will more than likely wait to the last minute to rush through them and do a crappo job. So what's the alternative? Well, you could send home this pack o' stuff: there's all kinds of fun stuff to keep

This activity was developed for a teacher whose students were having trouble distinguishing between "divide into groups of 5" and "divide into 5 groups...." To help with this, I designed these task cards for her students; working in pairs, they selected a card from a bowl, which could say things like "use 15 pennies: divide them into groups of 3" or "use 15 pennies; divide them into 3 groups." On their "record sheet," the students have a space to draw their solution and then write the equation w

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

For your enjoyment & edification. Solutions coming soon.....

Yes, you saw it with rats, turkeys and reindeers; fact it, you're eventually going to buy one of these, so why not snowmen and snowballs? NO JOKES PLEASE! Okay, the concept is simple: take the snowballs numbered from 1 - 6 and arrange them on the three sides so that each side adds up to 9. Rearrange them and they add up to 10. Do it again, and they add up to 11. Then do it one more time and they add up to 12. Record your results and see for the patterns that emerge in the corner numbers. Want

Equivalent Fractions! Equivalent Fractions? Equivalent Fractions ---- Equivalent Fraction Practice / Equivalent Fraction Problems..... Okay, I know this appears to be a shameless attempt to cash in on the Christmas Holiday, but I am deeply concerned that many of you loved the idea of your students knowing when they can and when they cannot make an equivalent fraction. Why you need this activity: many of our students do something peculiar when they learn a new skill - they apply it to every case

These activities are centered around the idea of measuring and constructing pitched roofs. Depending on a building's cost, function and location, a roof can either have a very steep pitch (which would mean a very acute angle, like you would find on ski houses in the mountains) or an obtuse angle (like a house in the tropics where it rains a lot and the water has to run off slowly to prevent flooding.) These activities are designed for students to work on individually or in pairs: the first part

This activity features at least 1 Billion (that's 1,000,000,000) different long division problems. How did I do it? Answer: a very, very small font! All kidding aside, this is an incredibly expandable activity that has an unlimited number of puzzles, with each puzzle having several different solutions. Students start with a blank long division problem, with blanks left where the divisor and dividend should be. Some blanks are not too sophisticated: it may be a single digit divisor into a double

Our hero Samantha Sagacious: Number Detective, returns with 10 new mysteries, but this time she has a new tool at her disposal: the 1 - 100 chart. Your students will love solving each of these mysteries one at a time, either solo or in pairs at learning centers. Comes complete with answer key, and a set of "Do It Yourself" riddles that your students can create (and send to me!) for publication. Samantha Sagacious Rocks!

What goes better with equivalent fractions than ZOMBIES! Each of these ghouls represents a fraction; surrounding them are equivalent fractions that are missing a numerator or denominator. Alas, one of them is a ZOMBIE and cannot be completed! For example, if there is a fraction 1/3 and ?/5 is one of the choices, it can't be completed, because 3rds can't be turned into 5ths. SO MUCH FUN your kids will love it finding zombie fractions! Customer Tips: How to get TPT credit to use on future purch

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