Middle School Math Moments (and more!)

This post has been moved to:  http://www.cognitivecardiowithmsmm.com/blog/playing-exponent-war

All problems can now be found here, on my new site:  http://www.cognitivecardiowithmsmm.com/problem-of-the-week.html This week's problem asks students to calculate a number of friendship bracelets that can be created, given the length needed for each bracelet and the amount of thread available. Students are then asked to figure out profit. Enjoy! Click to download this freebie! To access all of the Problem of the Week problems (previous and future), click here ! **Fonts in images by KG Fonts

There are some great new video blog posts on our Tools for Teaching Teens Site - a great variety of interesting information! Hope you'll check it out:-)

I don't think I can fit all 12 beach balls - but I may try! I know lots of people use beach balls in the classroom, but I haven't used them in such a long time that I thought I'd share my excitement about finally getting around to getting new ones! I have a little bit of a beach theme in my room this year, so that motivated me to get some beach balls again. I ordered a pack of 12 and am writing different math skills practice on them - so far I have multiplication facts, exponents, fraction/decimal conversions, and common measurement conversions. I have 12 beach balls to fill with math, so I need to decide on more topics. I think I'll do square roots, division facts, math vocabulary...I need to keep thinking:-) Palm tree w/math practices - word wall will be to the right. Our math classes aren't that long, but I figure I can squeeze in 5 minutes at the end of class once or twice a week to toss the beach balls around for some quick facts. With so many differ

All problems can now be found here, on my new site:  http://www.cognitivecardiowithmsmm.com/problem-of-the-week.html I used this week's problem in class today (6th grade), for early finishers. Because we haven't gotten too "into" a particular topic, I made the problem a mix of operations - mostly division and multiplication, but I saw students using addition as well. I really enjoy talking with my students about what they are thinking when they try to solve problems, for a few reasons - because 1) they think about problems in a different way than I do; 2) it makes me rethink the wording of the questions I ask (which makes me improve); and 3) I learn that there will be several ideas to share with class. I noticed a few different things when the students were solving the different parts of this week's problem: For part A, I multiplied 85 times 3 to get the total number of cookies and then divided by 24 (when I wrote the problem, I wanted the students to h

All problems can now be found here, on my new site:  http://www.cognitivecardiowithmsmm.com/problem-of-the-week.html As always (for me), it's so hard to believe that it's the beginning of another school year! One of my needs for the school year is to continue adding more problem solving to our weekly math work, so to help keep myself on track with creating new problems, I am starting a "Problem of the Week" blog post. Each week, on Sunday or Monday, I will share the latest problem I've written, along with the solution. In using these problems with my classes, I have students work alone for 5-7 minutes, recording any thoughts and/or math work on their own papers. Then they discuss their thoughts (and solutions if they have any) with a small group of 2-3 students and collaborate to find agreement about the solutions. This week's problem deals with exponents. After solving, the students might be surprised by how quickly an amount of money increases as i