Math Joke of the Week Posters

I started putting together these math joke of the week posters at the end of last school year. I’m super excited about how it turned out. I put the finishing touches on it this week, so I’m finally ready to share it with you guys.

I saw an idea on twitter a year or so ago (yes, I realize it’s a tweet from 2015, but I didn’t see it until 2018) where a teacher posted a daily joke for students in their classroom. It was actually featured in Monday Must Reads Volume 45.

I decided I wanted to do the same thing with math jokes. But, I wanted to do it on a weekly basis. I also knew if I didn’t pre-plan what all the jokes were going to be and prepare them all in advance that it would quickly become the “math joke of the month” or “math joke of the semester.”

I started collecting math jokes from various websites and typing them up in Google Slides. I have also collected these math jokes and created a page of math jokes if you just want to search for a specific math joke to use with your lesson.

After I had almost 40 jokes, I printed them off and placed them in sheet protectors.

I printed the answers 4 to a page and cut them apart so they could be inserted in the sheet protector behind the joke.

Then, I assembled all of the sheet protectors with the jokes and answers in my new “Math Joke of the Week Binder.”

Now, I can easily pull out a new joke each week and place the old joke back into the binder.

I have a chalkboard coordinate plane in my classroom that I don’t use because I also have a smaller dry erase magnetic coordinate plane.

Last year, I just hung some posters on top of the chalk board and sort of used it as a bulletin board. It worked, but it didn’t look the nicest. This summer I got some bulletin board paper and taped over the coordinate plane.

Then, I used some colored tape I had in the cabinet to make a border around the edge. It doesn’t look perfect up close, but it looks so much nicer than it did last year.

Since it’s still magnetic, I’m planning on using this board to hang various things using magnets such as announcements, information from the office that I’m required to post, upcoming ACT dates, my math joke of the week, and whatever else I can think of.

I bought a set of 16 magnetic clips from Amazon to use to make it super easy to hang stuff on the board. They’re super strong, and I think they’re going to make it easy to change out stuff as necessary.

Once I had my first joke of the week hung up, I decided it was missing something. So I decided to design a sign to hang above it that says “Math Joke of the Week.” It also gives students instructions about how to find out the answer to the joke.

As you can see, students flip up the bottom of the sheet protector to reveal the joke’s answer.

Here’s next week’s math joke of the week.

It was super easy to grab the binder, take out the next sheet protector, switch the magnetic clips to the new sheet protector, and place the old joke in the back of the binder for next year.

You could even make it a student job to switch out the joke each week!

Have a favorite math joke I didn’t include? Leave it in the comments, and I’ll type them up and add them to the files at a later date!

Some of the jokes I included are definitely targeted towards a high school audience (making mention of trig functions), so I’d like to add some more jokes so that there is a full year’s worth for elementary and middle school teachers as well!