Math

An Inductive Exploration of Linear Graphs

Let's play with linear graphing! First, don't set this up as a direct instruction lesson. That wouldn't be playing. Instead, capitalize on your students' ability to think inductively and recognize patterns. Set up a situation where they can construct their own meaning.

A Millionaire By Doubling Pennies

How long will it take to get a million dollars if you start with a penny and double it?

Strategy Game: Sprouts

With Sprouts, students draw a small set of dots and then connect those dots with lines. The first person who can’t make a connection loses.

Big Gifts, Small Prices

What if you want to buy a big gift that's cheap for its size? By calculating the volume of the object, we can find how much each cubic inch costs. Measured by price per volume, Thomas is 250 times more expensive than a big outdoor slide!

Depth and Complexity: Ethics… In Math!?

The Ethics prompt of depth and complexity fits so easily into the humanities… but what about ethics in math?!

Fixing my “Think Like A Statistician” Frame

I used a Depth and Complexity Frame like this with my math students. Let’s look at how we could improve this. Some problems: It asks four unrelated questions. I want to build a sequence of questions that climbs Bloom’s Taxonomy. Most of the questions are naturally answered with “yes” or “no” or a list. Questions […]

Mathematical Curiosities

Sometimes you encounter that math student who is simply interested in numbers. Here are some famous (and not so famous) sets of numbers that have curious properties.

Creating A New Mathematical Operation

Do your students realize that addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are all examples of the same idea: an operation? And that it's quite possible to create a brand new operation? Let's do it!

Olympic Medal Math Project

In the paper, I read about Norway's dominance of the Winter Olympics, despite being a tiny country. I love this juxtaposition of unexpected data! Let's turn it into a math project. Here are some questions I thought of…

Conflict and Quadrilaterals

Rather than merely asking "what patterns are there in these quadrilaterals" we'll set up an exploration of conflict and quadrilaterals.

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