Monday Must Reads: Volume 16
This blog post contains Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.
Happy Monday! It has officially turned fall in Oklahoma. This very chilly weekend included lots of quality time snuggled under a blanket on the couch. We woke up Saturday morning to find our house was a very chilly 53 degrees F, so we turned on our heater for the first time this season. It was a relaxing weekend that included lots of fun times in the kitchen. I made homemade pizza, veggie chili and cornbread, a yummy apple tea cake (using a recipe I found in one of my mother-in-law’s Australian cookbooks this summer), and some fun snacks for this afternoon’s Cookie Club.
I can’t share any delicious baked goodies with you, but I can share with you the tweets and blog posts I enjoyed this week. Here are this week’s must reads!
Dry Erase Pocket Desk Set Up
Sarah Martin shares a nifty desk set-up. Each desk has a command hook holding a dry erase pocket and magnetic eraser. I love how this gives each student access to the tools they might need at a moment’s notice.
MATH = LOVE RECOMMENDS…
I cannot imagine teaching math without my dry erase pockets! They instantly make any activity more engaging and save me countless hours at the copy machine since I can use the same class sets of copies year after year.
Here are my current go-to recommendations:
Domain and Range of Boxes Activity
Every year, it is a struggle to get my Algebra 1 students to wrap their heads around domain and range. As a result, I’m super excited about an activity recently shared by Elissa Miller. Beginning with finding the domain and range of simple boxes is brilliant, and I’m kicking myself for not thinking of it!
Real Numbers Auction
I love having classroom auctions. In the past, I’ve blogged about hosting a solving equations auction, a function auction, and a linear auction. Jae Ess shares her own awesome auction about real numbers.
Jumbo Ion Pieces
RupeleMX makes ionic bonding come alive by engaging his students with jumbo ion pieces. Last year, I used mini ion pieces with my physical science classes. This year, I’m going to have to step up my game!
Bowling for Data
Jazmine Castanon is an expert at getting students out of their seats and learning. I love how she took her class to the hall for some bowling to collect some fun stats data!
Four Fours on a Hundreds Chart
Langdon Park Maths shares an awesome way to organize solutions to the four fours puzzle: a hundreds chart!
Combining Like Terms with Sticky Notes
Lora Kermode shares an intriguing activity for combining like terms using sticky notes. Also, the posters and anchor charts on the wall are GORGEOUS.
Creating Cube Nets
Mr. Cotter poses a fun problem involving creating a net for a cube.
Foldable Math Art
David Butler continues to blow our minds with his mathematical creations. You MUST click through to watch this video here. Don’t trust me? Trust the 969 likes and 313 retweets on this video!
Slope Intercept War
Jennifer Williams offers up a blog post about a creative activity: slope and intercept war. I absolutely love the fact that students have to deal with different representations of linear functions in this activity.
Tetris Review Game
Michelle Bagley has created one of the most creative review games I have ever seen! I need to make my own tetris pieces so I can recreate this in my own classroom!
Dry Erase Number Lines
Sarah Costley makes some brilliant modifications to the interactive notebook number lines (horizontal and vertical) that I shared on my blog.
Perpendicular Lines Fact
Amanda Thom shares an interesting fact about the symbol for perpendicular lines.
Linear Functions Dice Activity
Liz Mastalio combines dice with linear functions to produce a fun practice activity. I find that my students’ engagement level goes way up when the problems are randomized using dice! Liz has generously shared her templates here on her blog.
Spaghetti Strength Test
Lori B Knox shares a fun linear regression project. After seeing many teachers use this project over the years, I’ve finally decided this is the year I will try it!
Illustrating Cubics
Dr. Males offers a fun, visual activity for working with cubic expressions.
Wiffle Ball Electrons
Mrs. Mongelli brings chemical bonding to life by having students act it out using wiffle balls as electrons. Maybe I’ll finally get to use the ping pong balls I bought a few years ago at Target’s Dollar Spot!
Visual Patterns with Two Color Counters
Maria Riverso takes visual patterns to the next level using two colored counters!
Estimating Cheezits
Sara Goldrick poses a fun estimation problem. I love that she offered the winner a box of cheese square snacks as their snack!
Panda Squares
Jenny Leake shares a fun puzzle that she solved at the #SUM2017 Conference. Intrigued, I did a google search and found a blog post from David Butler. This will be making an appearance on my puzzle table this week!
Until next week, keep up the awesome sharing!
This came from a language learning list, but it seems like it is a game that would work in many different classrooms:
https://www.spanishplayground.net/spanish-question-game-el-repollo/