Monday Must Reads: Volume 14

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Happy Monday! For me, it’s an especially happy Monday because it’s only a two day school week. Granted, parent teacher conferences on Monday night AND Tuesday night will make for a two day week that feels incredibly loooooooonnnnngggg. I feel like Fall Break is something I definitely need in my life right now. School has been exhausting lately. Friday night, I fell asleep on the couch before 6 pm! I’m looking forward to the chance to rest and recharge so I can be the best teacher possible for my students.

Seeing what other teachers are in their classrooms inspires and energizes me, so I’m excited to share this week’s Monday Must Reads with you!

Here are the tweets and blog posts I found most inspiring this week!

Hedge and Cononiah Watson combine a few basic household items to create a powerful visual for students regarding diagonals of 3-D shapes.

I especially like how David Butler points out the fact that giving students an item of a set length creates the need for taping two of the objects together to create the longer diagonal!

I’m always on the lookout for easy-to-implement classroom routines. I especially like this “Find my Rule” activity from Mrs. J M Clark. This could easily extend to so many topics!

Mrs. J M Clark also shares what she calls a “Back to Back Exercise.” Students stand with their backs to one another and describe graphs while their partner draws them. Then, they turn around and compare how close they were.

Sally Watson shares some beautiful, mathematical artwork created by her students. It was inspired by the symmetries found in the Alhambra Palace. What a gorgeous classroom display!

Image Source: https://twitter.com/sallywatson77/status/918884571449569280

I love watching shows like The Great British Bake Off and The Great Australian Bake Off. So, I was super excited to see the twist that Rebecca Owen put on the traditional technical challenge with “The Great British Biology Off.” How fun to frame a lab as a technical challenge!

Stephanie Fote shares a way to embrace the idea of “color with a purpose” while solving equations. LOVE it! I also adore her sign which I’m assuming can be flipped around to tell students whether or not they can use calculators for that day.

Whenever I’ve taught trigonometry in the past, angles of elevation and depression have always been one of the trickier topics to teach. I’ve found that it’s hard for students to visualize what the diagrams should look like. So, I’m a huge fan of how Elissa Miller has engaged her students with a diagram matching activity!

Mrs. Taylor hosts a bumper sticker design competition. Her chosen topic was lab safety, but this could be used for so many things. I love that each submission is given a number so that votes can be tallied to choose the winner!

Kelsey Fladda shares one of the most awesome scatterplots I have ever seen made in a math classroom.

I love seeing how math is taught in other countries. So, looking through these Irish geometry posters shared by Card Colm Mulcahy is a true treat!

Martin Joyce shares a photo of a resource he got from Lisa Bejarano. I used number talks for part of last year, and I felt like it was lacking a bit of structure. I think a handout like this would be PERFECT!

Reena Bhatti doesn’t teach math or science, but her twitter feed is still an inspiration to me as a math/science teacher. I would love to take this balloon activity and use it during our upcoming unit on relations and functions!

I’m also super inspired by Reena‘s interactive notebook pages!

Sterling Bristow takes the class cup stacking activity to a new level by having students create their own cup designs!

Sterling also shared a great construction activity for geometry students involving the flag of Nepal!

Elyssa Stoddard presents a fun activity for geometry teachers to use while working with angles.

Julie Morgan shares a fun and easy to implement review game on her blog, Fraction Fanatic. I love that this game can be used with ANY topic, and it doesn’t require any real prep time. Julie uses questions on cards that do take time to make, but in a pinch you could use any worksheet you found online!

Lisa Smith shares a game for working with solving equations and inequalities that I would love to adapt for next year since I’ve just finished those topics!

Amy Klose offers up a fun introduction to polynomial functions. I’m not teaching a class that covers this topic anymore, but I’m keeping this idea in my back pocket for future use!

Liz Caffrey turns her students into detectives with this fun function lesson. I’d love to see these stations to see how it works!

Melinda Golden offers up the most engaging activity I have ever seen for pythagorean theorem/distance formula. Students must drop two paratroopers and calculate the distance between them. It looks like the paratroopers are made out of coffee filters and yarn. How fun!

Kate McNabb shares her students’ awesome models of atoms. I love the variety of materials used!

Kristine Woodford took my idea of a Witzzle Bulletin Board and made it so much better. I designed mine to be a teacher-led activity for when we had a few odd minutes left in class. I love that Kristine made hers accessible to students at any time by offering the target number and a place for students to submit solutions!

Image Source: https://twitter.com/MathWithWoody/status/918499571071717376

Krista shares an engaging, real-world task involving Coke vs. Pepsi.

Exploding Dots has been taking over math classrooms all over the world this week. Justin Aion inspires with his reusable exploding dots machine made out of painters tape. Brilliant idea!

The NGSS Tweeps Twitter account recently shared a new-to-me strategy for promoting voice equity in the classroom.

Image Source: https://twitter.com/NGSS_tweeps/status/915247576735191040

Destinee Johnson gets students up and moving while learning about metallic bonding with a fun tag activity.

Jen Winne was featured in Volume 13 of Monday Must Reads for her creative mini poster presentations. I was super excited to see the finished product on twitter this week! Plus, she even wrote a blog post with more information which you can find here.

Halcyon Foster uses dice and paper strips to create an engaging activity that has students exploring the triangle inequality theorem.

Here are a few more details about how this activity works:

Gina Ging brilliantly uses a paper plate to teach circle vocabulary.

Stephanie Ling shares an awesome approach to teaching equation solving. I love the emphasis on solving equations that might look the same at first glance but are totally different.

Rick Barlow shares an awesome slope activity that has students comparing different climbs presented in as different representations. You should check out his blog for more details!

Jennifer Williams combines football and functions for a fun activity. I need to get my hands on some footballs before we start functions in Algebra 1!