20 Questions Fun Activity

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I have enjoyed the opportunity to interact with many of you and to share ideas and resources with you over the years. I hope that you have found some value at DigitalLesson.com and in receiving our Middle School Math Treasures newsletter. 

I look forward to sharing many exciting ideas and resources that you can take back into your middle school math classroom

Today I would like to share with you a quick, fun, critical thinking activity.  I often use this activity on the day before a school vacation (Winter Break, Spring Break, or even summer vacation).  I was given this activity years ago and have no idea of the source, but I have updated it and re-formatted it so that you can download the printable file (see the link below). [Read more...]

Filed Under: Printable Math Activity, Problem Solving

Math Practice Software Kids Love

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I first encountered The Quarter Mile math practice software a number of years ago at a math conference.  My sister (also a math teacher) and I sat down at computers in the Barnum Software vendor booth and tried to win a free copy of the software by being the fastest to solve the math problems.  We must have played for the better part of an hour.  It was addicting and fun!  Both of us returned to our classrooms and incorporated The Quarter Mile into our math programs.

What is The Quarter Mile?

The Quarter Mile is a math practice software program that makes kids want to practice foundational math skills.  In individual game sessions lasting from 45 seconds to 2 1/2 minutes, students select a topic, choose a car or horse, and race against their own previous best scores.  The faster they enter correct answers, the faster they finish the race.  The Quarter Mile is like flashcards on steroids, with sound effects (which can be turned down or off) and visuals. 

Level 3, which is designed for grades 6 through 9, includes 29,000 unique problems covering topics involving decimals, percents, fractions, estimation, integers, and equations.  [Read more...]

Filed Under: Math Games, Math Software Tagged With: ,

Math Teacher Thanksgiving

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We are only a few short days away from our annual Thanksgiving celebration here in the United States.  I am aware that we have readers in Canada, England, Australia, and many other countries throughout the world and I know that you also have many things to be thankful for.  It goes without saying that many readers of the DigitalLesson.com blog are thankful for their God, their family, their friends, and their health among other things. 

In this post, however,  I want to take a few minutes and reflect on things that all math teachers can be thankful for.  So let’s dive right in. 

Here is my list (in no particular order) of 10 things that we, as math teachers, can all be thankful for. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Special Events, Teaching Math Tagged With: , ,

The Rewards of Repetition

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At the beginning of last school year I was in a discussion with my principal about how to raise our state standardized test scores.  I told her that I knew how to raise the scores.  It was simple, really.  As math teachers, we just needed to continuously have students practice the key math concepts covered by the all-powerful state test.  It was all a matter of repetition. 

Now I am not a big fan of teaching to the test but if my boss (the state) has determined that 7th graders are responsible to know a certain body of mathematical knowledge before they leave my classroom, then by-golly I am going to try my best to get them there.

As I shared my keen insight with the principal, she looked at me and asked if I had been talking to our math department chairmen.  I hadn’t.  It turns out that we had just decided to purchase a rather expensive daily warmup program to use with our students. 

What would this warmup program do?  [Read more...]

Filed Under: Teaching Math, Test Preparation Tagged With: , ,

Spider Man

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It was a recent cool, dark morning as I walked onto my middle school campus.  I had no idea what danger awaited me just outside the door of Room 13 as I innocently approached the classroom.  The campus was quiet, and when I am not too tired I enjoy the chance to get to campus early to work undisturbed in my room. 

My wife and two kids were still at home asleep when the incident occurred.  Just outside the base of my classroom door, suspended in mid-air, was a gigantic black widow spider.  I knew that she lived in the little hole between the student lockers and the block wall of the classroom building (I had seen her web) but I had not been to school early enough to run into her.

These little ladies can be dangerous.  I didn’t like the idea of a black widow spider so close to the students and their lockers and frankly I was tired of the widow mucking up my door with its messy webs.  I had gone so far as to stuff construction paper into the hole to try to block the spider’s access to us all.  No luck.

It was time for a showdown.  Six in the morning and dark.  No one else around.  It was either her or me.  Slowly I removed my shoe, raised it high above my head, bent at the knees like someone about to hike a football, and came down on the  intruder in a lightning flash of power.  That’s when it happened. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Math Fun, Math Stories, Teaching Math Tagged With: ,
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