Middle School Math Moments (now Cognitive Cardio Math)

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This year our school was fortunate to be able to have an after-school program for math once a week (twice a week the month before state testing). I was one of the sixth-grade teachers who worked with the students after school. We had room for about 15 students, but had some difficulty convincing those students who really needed the extra time to take part in the program :( One afternoon, I decided to use a few different games with the students; one of those game was Yahtzee. I was so surprised to learn that of the 9 students present that day, only ONE had ever played it (she had only played it once or twice and didn't really remember how it worked!) Yahtzee is great for so many math skills - adding, multiplying, logical thinking, problem solving....I wish there was more time in my math classes to be able to spend time playing games like this! I wonder how many children ARE still playing these types of games.... I recently thought about the fact that Yahtzee could be used to ex...

"Rock Around the Clock" is a great Mathline lesson that focuses on probability. In this lesson, students are presented with a contest situation: in packs of gum, there are photographs of six different rock stars. The first person to collect all six pictures, and take them to the radio station that is sponsoring the contest, will win an all expense paid trip to any location in the US! The questions posed to the students is this - "What is a reasonable number of packs of gum you should purchase in order to collect all six pictures?" This question is discussed as a class....to think about the fewest number of packs possible, but to consider how many packs would be reasonable. The students are then put into groups and each group is given materials to simulate the contest. I have used this lesson twice; once I used dice and once I used colored disks (on which I wrote the rock stars' names). When using the dice, students simply roll the die and then record the n...

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Krypto is a game I learned about at a conference where Dr. Lola May presented (in like 1993, I think!). I didn't realize until recently that it was a commercial game that could be purchased :-)   I had simply used the game idea from time to time, following the rules as laid out in the book. Krypto can be played with whole numbers or fractions (and with positive and negative integers as well, I'm sure!), but for today, I'm going to talk about the use of it with fractions. The rules are simple (kind of like the "24" game): 1. Choose 5 common fractions, with denominators of halves, thirds, fourths, sixths, eighths, tenths and twelfths. 2. Students add, subtract, multiply, and/or divide the fractions to make the 5 fractions equal the target number of 1. 3. Students can receive points for meeting the target number of 1. If they do so using only 3 numbers, they get 300 pts; 4 numbers = 400 pts; all 5 numbers = 1,000 pts....you can set up the point system any way yo...

I was a very new teacher (in my second year, I believe), when I was lucky enough to go to a conference and hear Dr. Lola May speak. She was a great presenter, and certainly made an impression on me. I still (20 years later) have the book that was given at the conference and refer to it now and again. It was at this conference that I first learned how to use "casting out nines" to check the answers to multiplication and division problems. I had never heard of this method when I was a student, but being a new teacher, I kind of assumed it was a method well-known to other teachers.....until I talked about it during a meeting at which our Curriculum and Instruction director was present. He overheard me explaining it to another teacher; he had never heard of it, was quite surprised and interested in how it worked, and asked me to show him a few more examples. Over the years, I have taught it to some classes (and not to others...I haven't taught it yet this year, but plan t...

I love to play thinking games with my students (especially when they don't really view it as thinking)! Quite a few years ago (at least 15) I went to a make 'n take workshop, and whoever was running it had quite a few activities made from cardboard circles. For this particular activity, a hole had to be made in the center of the circle, and a shoestring was secured to the bottom of the circle and threaded through the hole. The circle was divided into 32 sections, and each section was labeled with a letter of the alphabet (using some letters, like vowels, twice). As you can see, the sections can be colored so the circle is more attractive:) Yes, this is an OLD wheel!! The rules of the game were conveniently written on the back (otherwise I might have forgotten them!) Here they are: 1. Divide into 2 teams (sometimes I divide the class into 3 or 4 teams) 2. Spin the wheel for Team 1 (hold onto the shoestring and spin wheel). 3.  A member of Team 1 stops the wheel with...