Looking for ideas as you plan your first day of school math activities? I’ve got enough fun and interactive activities here to last you the entire first week of school and then some!
Groupwork
Several years ago, I heard about the Let’s Make Squares activity from an OKMath Newsletter sent out by Christine Koerner. She recommended Let’s Make Squares as a great activity for the first week of school. I had already decided that I was going to do the 2s to 9s Challenge as my first day of …
Lonesome Llama is an excellent first day of school activity/first week of school activity to teach students how to effectively communicate in a group. The activity is from IMP (Interactive Mathematics Program) Groups of students are provided with a deck of cards. Each card features a different llama’s house. Students must work together to figure …
Survival in the Desert is a cooperative groupwork task. I have used this task in the past as a first week of school activity. I learned about this activity from reading Kagan’s Cooperative Learning book. I’ve seen the same activity featured in other books as well since then. Today I want to share some free downloads I created …
Most likely, you’ve ran across some variation of the two buckets puzzle at some time in your life. You have two buckets. One bucket holds exactly five gallons. The other bucket holds exactly three gallons. How can you measure exactly four gallons of water into the five gallon bucket? Groupwork Norms for the Two Buckets …
Encourage groupwork and communication with this thrilling Cup Stacking Challenge, an ideal team-building activity for the first week of school.
Build It is a cooperative, team building activity that encourages students to work together, communicate, and think logically as they construct a geometric object to satisfy a set of given clues. If you’re looking to work on vocabulary, this activity introduces/reinforces words such as “face” and “edge.” I learned about Build It from Stanford’s website. The …
Count to Ten is a team-building activity that I like to use at the beginning of the school year in those random five minute pockets of time that tend to pop up. I usually try to share on my blog where I got the idea for an activity from, but I honestly have no idea …
A few years ago, I created a set of group work roles posters for my classroom. These were inspired by Ilana Horn’s Strength in Numbers. Sadly, I have to admit that I hung them in my classroom that year and NEVER once used them. I wanted to do group work, but I …
Late last week, I spent some time prepping for another first-week activity inspired by Elizabeth Cohen’s Designing Groupwork: Strategies for the Heterogeneous Classroom. It’s called “Guess My Rule.” Y’all are probably tired of hearing me gush about this book, but I seriously learned so much about groupwork this summer from reading it. It made me …
Rainbow Logic is a cooperative group work task designed to give students practice with both spatial reasoning, deductive thinking, and communication with group members. One group member designs a 3 x 3 colored grid. The other group members must work together to determine the placement of each of the tiles on the grid. Origin of …
One of my favorite strategies to use during group/team work is red/yellow/green cups. I have also heard these referred to as traffic light cups in the past. I bought a package of each color of cups at Party City a few years ago. I’m still using the same cups, so they’ve held up well. I …
Inspiration/Origin of Broken Circles I was introduced to the classic Broken Circles activity when I read Elizabeth Cohen’s Designing Groupwork: Strategies for the Heterogeneous Classroom. This is one of the most practical and applicable education books I have ever read. As I continue in my journey to engage my students in productive group work, this …
I’m excited to share these new TEAMS Group Work Norm Posters with you today. I think I’ve finally gotten over my “Oh my goodness school is out and grad school is done and I don’t have to do anything productive” phase. Yesterday, I wrote out a new SBG skills list for Algebra 1 for next …
Okay, today I’m sharing yet another idea I stole from Ilana Horn’s Strength in Numbers: Collaborative Learning in Secondary Mathematics. You could say I’m kinda obsessed with this book. I’m feeling so much better at attempting group work in my classroom after reading this book. To encourage student conversation during group work time, the author …
This will be my first year to assign roles during group work. Maybe this is where I’ve gone wrong with group work over the past two years. I decided to design a set of group work roles posters that could be hung on the wall to remind everybody (including myself) what the responsibilities are of …
I’m excited to share some group work norms posters I created with you today. One of my big goals for the upcoming school year is to incorporate effective group work into my classroom. Group work is something I really struggle with. I try it, it doesn’t go how I want it to, and I give …
Let’s just say that day two of year two was amazing! The $2.95 I spent on supplies for the marshmallow challenge activity was money well-spent! I hope this becomes an annual activity for the first week of school. When my students entered the classroom, they saw this message on the Smart Board. The Marshmallow Challenge …