Middle School Math Moments (now Cognitive Cardio Math)

I'm so happy today! For starters, I FINALLY made a binder for when I have a sub (it only took me...um....22 years!).  I mean, I did have good sub folders in the past and I always make sure to have good sub plans, but I finally decided that a binder would be the most organized. My blue and yellow tabbed sections are the rosters and seating charts for the different classes. The red tabs are important health issues, student information, and fire drill/lockdown, etc procedures. To the left, I have a page protector that holds various items that aren't hole-punchable. I hope this will be convenient for substitutes to use! Also, I hit 100 blog followers on Bloglovin' today! (hope it doesn't go back to 99 tomorrow!!) When I started my blog, I didn't really think anyone would care to read what I wrote, so I am thankful that people have started to follow me:) Thank you!

Link up a favorite math product (or two) for grades 4-8, free or paid! This is my first attempt at a link-up...hope it works right!! :-)   An InLinkz Link-up

Because the integrated unit we are working on includes the use of maps, we used our metric measuring and conversion skills to create a map of our classroom (as I mentioned the other day). The most challenging aspect of this was choosing a scale, which ended up being 2cm  = 1 m, for most students. A few students decided on a different scale for their maps, which was fine....they made good choices. Some of the students kept their maps simple, meeting the basic requirements, while others included a greater number of items from the room than they needed to. Overall, I was pleased with the way that everything turned out - students did well with the initial measuring, converted correctly, and drew their maps correctly to scale (with some guidance....we did most of the work in the classroom to avoid confusion at home). A few things I would change about the way we worked on this: Initially, I did not tell them to measure in meters, but they ended up having to convert everything to

Wow! Time goes by so quickly! I was just reading (quickly) a few other blogs and noticing quite a few bloggers who are surprised at how much time has past since their last post. Me too! Things are so busy...teaching, planning, grading, helping my own daughter with school work, house stuff, trying to fit in exercise, and trying not to get TOO sucked in to Pinterest as I try to spend a little time looking for new ideas! Oh yeah, and attempting to get some decent sleep!! I hope everyone is having a good school year so far. I am really happy with our students so far this year! This week, we've been continuing in the metric realm, with creating maps of our classroom, and the students have been doing a great job. The students have measured the length and width of the classroom and at least 5 items in the room, to include on their map. The real challenge now is coming up with a reasonable scale for their maps. We tested out a few scales, like 1 cm = 1 m, but that would give us a map th

This post has been moved to:  http://www.cognitivecardiowithmsmm.com/blog/metric-matching-and-free-problem-solving 

This post has been moved to:  http://www.cognitivecardiowithmsmm.com/blog/metric-matching-activity

How many decimeters is it from the front of the room to the back of the room? This is the question I posed to my students this week.  Our team is currently working on an interdisciplinary unit, and one part of it includes metric conversions. The students are learning about the metric system  in science, so I'm supporting that in math class. To being this particular lesson, students brainstormed any possible units that could be used to measure from the front of the room to the back, and they brainstormed tools that could be used to do the measuring. After some discussion about the difference between yardsticks and meter sticks, I gave the students the task of measuring that distance in decimeters. So, they set about the task. They knew what a meter was, and seemed to know where the centimeters were on the meter stick, but they didn't know exactly what a decimeter was, and I wouldn't tell them:-)    I wanted them to struggle some, and try to figure it out on their own. When

The days are going by so quickly! I just wanted to share my first Tagxedo creation:)  Yesterday, I had the students complete the sentence, "Math is important because..." using post-its to record their answers on the board, as explained in the post on Middle School Math Rules . I took all of the responses from the 85 students that I have, entered them in the Tagxedo creator, and this word cloud was the result! I love it! In the "word options" section, I set it so that common words were not removed, and identical words were not combined, so that the students could see how often the same words were repeated. Some of the phrases that so many of them wrote, like "everyday life," or "helps in everyday life" or "helps with obstacles," were separated, but I think their message still comes through...that math is important in everything in life! I wish I could print this on poster-size paper, but do not have the capability to do so. So f