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Speed Skills Challenge: Percent of a Number

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I recently gave the Percent of a Number Speed Skills Challenge module to my students.  The goal of this post is to share my classroom results and my observations in order that this may benefit you, my fellow middle school math teacher.  The Percent of a Number module is available as a free download on my Speed Skills Challenge page so if you find this post interesting please follow the link over and download it to use in your classroom.

The Speed Skills Challenge Foundational Fluency Program

The Speed Skills Challenge Foundational Fluency Program was recently released here on DigitalLesson.com.  I estimate that I spent approximately 100 hours creating the Speed Skills Challenge.  The goals of this program are to build foundational skills that will help students to be successful in our mathematics classes, score higher on standardized tests, and become more powerful mathematically. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Speed Skills Challenge Program, Teaching Math, Test Preparation Tagged With: , ,

Video: Problem Solving in the Math Classroom

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At a recent seminar that I attended, I was introduced to Dan Meyer’s TED Talks video on the topic of problem solving in the mathematics classroom.  The talk is entitled, “Math Class Needs a Makeover.”

Dan begins with a classic quote when he says, “I teach high school math. I sell a product to a market that doesn’t want it, but is forced by law to buy it.” In the remainder of his TED Talk, Dan shares his ideas on how to more effectively teach problem solving in the classroom. His ideas apply equally well to those of us who teach middle school math.

Without trying to re-convey Dan’s ideas, here are a few areas he touches on in his talk:
(Watch the video below to see the details.)

  • math reasoning is “the application of math processes to the world around us.”
  • 5 symptoms that you are doing math reasoning wrong as a teacher
  • ideas on how to teach problem solving
  • the importance of having students formulate the problem
  • 5 suggestions for teaching patient problem solving

The 11 minutes you spend watching the video will be well worth your time and will give you some things to think about when it comes to teaching problem solving in your classroom.

As a middle school math teacher, what do you think is important when teaching problem solving to your students?

 

Filed Under: Problem Solving, Teaching Math 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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