August 3, 2017 – My ONE GOAL for the 2017-2018 School Year I am GREAT at setting goals. Just like I’m great at making to-do lists. What I’m terrible at, however, is actually doing those things I set out to do. I learned a long time ago that it was pointless for me to make …
Search results for: PUZZLES
The Crazy Eight Paper Folding Puzzle may be made up of only a single sheet of paper, but it is actually eight different engaging and infuriating puzzles in one!
Life has been busy with the start of a new school year. I’m still working on achieving that thing called work/life balance, so today’s Monday Must Reads post will be shorter than normal. I’d love to feature more great ideas (I have a list!), but I’m giving myself grace. I’ll get another chance next week …
Today I’m excited to share the 9 Dots Puzzle with you. I love puzzles. I also love finding a way to incorporate them into class. Since the first week of school is rampant with schedule changes (especially this year since we don’t have a guidance counselor), I aim to engage my students in math-y activities …
Today I want to share one of my favorite puzzles that I used with my students last year. It involves one of my favorite things in the world, Post It Notes! I learned about this puzzle from Chris Smith‘s amazing maths newsletter. If you’re not signed up to receive his newsletters, you need to do …
It seems like it was just yesterday that I decided to start Monday Must Reads as a weekly feature to highlight the awesomeness I see daily through the blogs I read and the inspiring teachers I follow on Twitter. The Answer is the Least Important Part of the Problem Rick Barlow‘s tweet caught my eye …
I’m back to cleaning out old draft posts. Today, the plan is to share about a sticky note challenge I issued my math concepts students. At my school, math concepts is a class for freshman that are not yet ready for Algebra 1. The puzzles in this post were taken from the Transition to Algebra …
It’s summer which means it’s time to clean out the drafts folder in Blogger! This post has been sitting as a draft since September! My math concepts class (a class for freshman not yet ready for Algebra 1) really working on SolveMe Mobiles this past year. If you aren’t familiar with SolveMe Mobiles, you need …
Things have been pretty quiet on the blog front since the last volume of Monday Must Reads. I had multiple posts I wanted to write, but I had to exercise some tough love and not let myself write any more blog posts until my state teacher of the year application was finished. I’m cheating a …
My last professional day of the year is finished. Grades are turned in. And, I’ve already started throwing out all my extra quizzes from this year to clear out the filing cabinet for next year. It’s also Monday which means it’s time for Volume 3 of Monday Must Reads. I’ve been trying to write one …
Today’s blog post was inspired by Cheryl Leung and Where’s Waldo? I loved this idea, but I had a problem. My Where’s Waldo? books from my childhood are long gone. I considered ordering a few from Amazon, but I needed them sooner rather than later for class. Now, it’s time for a fun fact. Did …
Today I want to share with you this Square Pi Day Puzzle. Since this next week is spring break, my students and I celebrated an early Pi Day on Friday, March 10th. Most of the activities we did were my usual “go-to” pi day activities. We had a contest to see who could memorize the …
Last week, I ran across an activity by Frank Tapson called “How Far Can YOU Climb?” (page 34). The premise of the puzzle is quite simple. Form the longest chain possible by moving horizontally or vertically from one number to an increasing number. Here are Frank Tapson’s instructions: I printed off a class set, and …
These Angle Maze Puzzles from Naoki Inaba challenge students to find a path through a maze by being able to recognize common angle measurements. Draw a path through the maze from S to G. Each time you pass through a numbered circle, the path must form that angle in degrees. This summer, I blogged about …
I created this balancing equations foldable for my physical science classes. We began our chemical reactions unit in physical science by balancing chemical equations. When I took chemistry in high school, I ADORED balancing equations. Each problem was like a mini-puzzle. And, I love puzzles! I put a circle in front of each reactant …
Recently, I began partnering with ThinkFun to review some of their new STEM brainteaser puzzles in exchange for a blog post. (Here’s the required FTC disclosure: ThinkFun provided me with a free copy of this game in exchange for a blog post. The opinions included in this blog post are 100% my own.) It’s no secret on …
If you love logic style puzzle games, then you are most likely very familiar with the ThinkFun company. ThinkFun is famous for games like Chocolate Fix, Math Dice, Swish, Izzi, and Rush Hour. While browsing the ThinkFun website a couple of weeks ago, I found this interesting fact on their FAQ page: I have a blog …
I love presenting my students with this interactive frog jumping puzzle that I found online here. Each frog can only jump the way it is facing. And, frogs can only jump over frogs of the opposite color. The goal of the puzzle is to make the frogs switch sides. I give different a students …
August 9, 2016 – Cabinet Organizing Today turned into a pretty productive day. I read Smith and Stein’s 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions while waiting to have the alternator changed on our car. According to my Amazon account, I actually purchased this book back in May of 2014! It’s so sad that I’m …
Today I want to share some area and perimeter posters I created for my classroom. I spent another afternoon working in my classroom today, and I feel like I actually made a lot of progress. I still need to start working on actual math lesson plans at some point. My principal e-mailed out the schedule …
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 have a bad habit of complaining about things. To work on this, I’ve been trying to consciously notice what I complain about and attempt to make a difference somehow. I used to complain about how homework wasn’t accomplishing what I wanted it to. Instead of continuing to complain about it, I decided to do …
I could tell my Algebra 2 students still needed a lot of practice dividing polynomials using the box method, so I put together this activity. We did this activity the day after we completed our dividing polynomials using the box method foldable. I decided to devise some dividing polynomial jigsaw puzzles for my students to …
I want to share this dividing polynomials using the box method foldable that I created for my Algebra 2 students to work through and glue in their interactive notebooks. I’m excited to talk about one of my favorite things in the world with you here on my blog: dividing polynomials. I used to dread teaching …
Last Friday, I pulled a this make it even brain teaser out for Figure It Out! Friday. I found a puzzle called “Make It Even” in The Moscow Puzzles: 359 Mathematical Recreations by Boris A. Kordemsky. The book is published by Dover, so it’s super affordable! I’ve found numerous puzzles I want to try out …