Showing posts with label holidays in math class. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holidays in math class. Show all posts
Monday, September 9, 2019
11 Awesome Math Halloween Activities Your Class Will Love
Halloween is a tricky time in middle school. Some kids are disappointed to find out there are no longer going to be Halloween parties at school, but most kids are still excited that it's coming! If you're wanting something fun to do on Halloween, but know that you need to keep your class learning, here are some fun Halloween ideas for a middle school math classroom.
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
Ideas for Celebrating Pi Day
Pi Day is a day we all love as math teachers, right??? A chance to shine light on math in a fun way. So here are some fun ways you could celebrate Pi Day this year.
1. Do a Pi Day Breakout. Breakouts (like an escape room for the classroom) are lots of fun, and great to teach those "soft skills" we're always hearing about, like collaboration and perseverance. A quick Google search for Pi Day Breakout turned up lots of free resources. Here's a link to a digital Pi Day Breakout, but you can find more pretty easily!
2. Play Rolling for Pi. This quick game is a fun way to start things off for Pi Day, or something you could do if you just have a short time to celebrate. I give each student a six-sided number cube. Then I have everyone roll together, and you get to remain standing as long as you are rolling the digits of pi (in order!). So on the first roll, only those kids that rolled a 3 would remain in the game. Then they would roll again and try to get a 1, and so on. The kid that rolls the most digits of pi is the winner. This game works fine with 6-sided dice for the first several digits of pi (3.1415), and you could just declare anyone that got this far the winner. Variations of this game include using 10-sided dice or having students create a spinner to use.
3. Pi Day Puzzles. I have a fun (FREE!) Pi Day Sudoku puzzle in my Teachers Pay Teachers store that would be fun. There are two puzzles; one has Pi Day trivia, while the other other has students calculating problems with circumference and area of circles.
4. Pi Day chain contest. This is another great way to get kids working collaboratively. Divide your class up into groups of 3-5 students. Each group is supposed to make a paper chain with the digits of pi in the correct order. The group with the longest chain of accurate digits in the time given wins.
5. Pi Day Trivia. Take a quick break and play some trivia. My kids love to play trivia when we have a few extra minutes. A quick Google search can find lots of free trivia.
6. Pi Day STEM Challenge. I'm going to have kids create the smallest circular "landing pool" for a daredevil to dive into.....but it has to be big enough for the daredevil to hit the pool 10 times in a row! My "diving board" will be a ruler, and my "daredevil" will be a simple pencil eraser. You can see the set up below. After the kids create the pool, they have to find the surface area. Click here if you're interested in full supporting materials for this lesson!
7. Write a Pi Day story. Want to get your English teacher involved in Pi Day? Here's a fun one for them! There are two ways to do this. One way is to have kids write a "story"....the catch is that the word lengths in the story have to follow the digits of pi. So you start with a 3-letter word, then a 1-letter word, etc... Another variation, is to have the kids write a normal story, but they have to work in the digits of pi in order. This one gets fun because words like "to" count as a two, and "won" counts as one.
8. Make pie!!! The science teacher on my team gets involved in the day by having the kids make a cream pie as a lab, using Bunsen burners. We have parents donate ingredients, and have half the kids make chocolate cream pie and half make butterscotch cream pie. Then of course, at the end of the day, we eat!
9. Pi Day problem hunt. Give your students a printout with one page of pi digits printed out. Have them look for problems within the digits. The problems can be simple (1 + 4 = 5) or more complicated ones using order or operations.
10. Pi Day Hopping Races. If you are able to take kids outside or to the gym, this one might be fun. Have a race where students have to hop the digits of pi. 3 hops on one foot, 1 hop on the other foot, 4 hops on the other foot, etc....
11. Pi Day Goose Chase. Ok, I have to admit that I haven't tried Goose Chase EDU yet. It's like a digital scavenger hunt. It looks super fun, though and I'm dying to try it some time. Here is one I created that would work for Pi Day. Click here to see the one I made.
12. Pi Day Scavenger Hunt. Speaking of scavenger hunts, a paper scavenger hunt is a more traditional option. Last year my class had a great time with this. I had pictures posted of all kind of circular objects with the radius or diameter labeled. Their scavenger hunt list included things like "something edible with an area of 15" or "something hot with a circumference of 20 in". The kids got a little creative with it, and it was fun! Click here to get one that is ready to go from my TpT store..
1. Do a Pi Day Breakout. Breakouts (like an escape room for the classroom) are lots of fun, and great to teach those "soft skills" we're always hearing about, like collaboration and perseverance. A quick Google search for Pi Day Breakout turned up lots of free resources. Here's a link to a digital Pi Day Breakout, but you can find more pretty easily!
2. Play Rolling for Pi. This quick game is a fun way to start things off for Pi Day, or something you could do if you just have a short time to celebrate. I give each student a six-sided number cube. Then I have everyone roll together, and you get to remain standing as long as you are rolling the digits of pi (in order!). So on the first roll, only those kids that rolled a 3 would remain in the game. Then they would roll again and try to get a 1, and so on. The kid that rolls the most digits of pi is the winner. This game works fine with 6-sided dice for the first several digits of pi (3.1415), and you could just declare anyone that got this far the winner. Variations of this game include using 10-sided dice or having students create a spinner to use.
3. Pi Day Puzzles. I have a fun (FREE!) Pi Day Sudoku puzzle in my Teachers Pay Teachers store that would be fun. There are two puzzles; one has Pi Day trivia, while the other other has students calculating problems with circumference and area of circles.
4. Pi Day chain contest. This is another great way to get kids working collaboratively. Divide your class up into groups of 3-5 students. Each group is supposed to make a paper chain with the digits of pi in the correct order. The group with the longest chain of accurate digits in the time given wins.
5. Pi Day Trivia. Take a quick break and play some trivia. My kids love to play trivia when we have a few extra minutes. A quick Google search can find lots of free trivia.
6. Pi Day STEM Challenge. I'm going to have kids create the smallest circular "landing pool" for a daredevil to dive into.....but it has to be big enough for the daredevil to hit the pool 10 times in a row! My "diving board" will be a ruler, and my "daredevil" will be a simple pencil eraser. You can see the set up below. After the kids create the pool, they have to find the surface area. Click here if you're interested in full supporting materials for this lesson!
7. Write a Pi Day story. Want to get your English teacher involved in Pi Day? Here's a fun one for them! There are two ways to do this. One way is to have kids write a "story"....the catch is that the word lengths in the story have to follow the digits of pi. So you start with a 3-letter word, then a 1-letter word, etc... Another variation, is to have the kids write a normal story, but they have to work in the digits of pi in order. This one gets fun because words like "to" count as a two, and "won" counts as one.
8. Make pie!!! The science teacher on my team gets involved in the day by having the kids make a cream pie as a lab, using Bunsen burners. We have parents donate ingredients, and have half the kids make chocolate cream pie and half make butterscotch cream pie. Then of course, at the end of the day, we eat!
9. Pi Day problem hunt. Give your students a printout with one page of pi digits printed out. Have them look for problems within the digits. The problems can be simple (1 + 4 = 5) or more complicated ones using order or operations.
10. Pi Day Hopping Races. If you are able to take kids outside or to the gym, this one might be fun. Have a race where students have to hop the digits of pi. 3 hops on one foot, 1 hop on the other foot, 4 hops on the other foot, etc....
11. Pi Day Goose Chase. Ok, I have to admit that I haven't tried Goose Chase EDU yet. It's like a digital scavenger hunt. It looks super fun, though and I'm dying to try it some time. Here is one I created that would work for Pi Day. Click here to see the one I made.
12. Pi Day Scavenger Hunt. Speaking of scavenger hunts, a paper scavenger hunt is a more traditional option. Last year my class had a great time with this. I had pictures posted of all kind of circular objects with the radius or diameter labeled. Their scavenger hunt list included things like "something edible with an area of 15" or "something hot with a circumference of 20 in". The kids got a little creative with it, and it was fun! Click here to get one that is ready to go from my TpT store..
Thursday, December 7, 2017
The Best Math Christmas Project Ever
Ok, this will be a short post.....but I just have to tell you how excited I am about my classroom Christmas tree this year.
We decided on a 3:1 ratio of green pyramids to other colored pyramids for the "decorations".
I'm excited. The kids are excited. What a win-win! And it's been pretty easy. The only supplies I've needed are colored copies of a net for a triangular prism and tape. One day for my warm up, I reviewed the surface area and had every kid fold up one pyramid. And that is the only class time I've taken to do this. The rest was kids taking these home to work on, or kids that wanted to work during our advisor/homeroom time at the end of the day.
I will definitely do this again next year. I think one thing I will change is that I will use the chance to more fully review surface area and make kids draw the height in on the base of the pyramid. Then I'll have them find the surface area. I'll probably also give them 10 minutes or so to decorate their pyramid, but you wouldn't have to do that.
Patterns. Geometry. Math. Art. Beauty. Creativity. Christmas Decorations. It's perfect!
Update: When I did this last year, I just used a basic pattern for a triangular pyramid printed two per page. This year, I'm going to make it a bit fancier. I have several patterns for students to use. Some of them have clip art that kids can color. One pattern reviews area of triangles and has students find the surface area of the pyramid. One pattern focuses on acts of kindness and one focuses on different things about the student. I think I will have each kid make two of these....one of their choice and then everyone will do the area of triangles one. I'm also excited that I think I have the other 7th grade teachers on board to do this as well, so I think we will be able to take this to the "next level" and have an even bigger tree!
We decided on a 3:1 ratio of green pyramids to other colored pyramids for the "decorations".
I'm excited. The kids are excited. What a win-win! And it's been pretty easy. The only supplies I've needed are colored copies of a net for a triangular prism and tape. One day for my warm up, I reviewed the surface area and had every kid fold up one pyramid. And that is the only class time I've taken to do this. The rest was kids taking these home to work on, or kids that wanted to work during our advisor/homeroom time at the end of the day.
I will definitely do this again next year. I think one thing I will change is that I will use the chance to more fully review surface area and make kids draw the height in on the base of the pyramid. Then I'll have them find the surface area. I'll probably also give them 10 minutes or so to decorate their pyramid, but you wouldn't have to do that.
Patterns. Geometry. Math. Art. Beauty. Creativity. Christmas Decorations. It's perfect!
Update: When I did this last year, I just used a basic pattern for a triangular pyramid printed two per page. This year, I'm going to make it a bit fancier. I have several patterns for students to use. Some of them have clip art that kids can color. One pattern reviews area of triangles and has students find the surface area of the pyramid. One pattern focuses on acts of kindness and one focuses on different things about the student. I think I will have each kid make two of these....one of their choice and then everyone will do the area of triangles one. I'm also excited that I think I have the other 7th grade teachers on board to do this as well, so I think we will be able to take this to the "next level" and have an even bigger tree!
It's easy to do this project with a simple triangular pyramid that you can easily find with a Google search. Click here for a video tutorial explaining how to put the pyramids together. If you'd like the patterns shown above, click here to see this at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Talk Like a Pirate (and Practice Order of Operations!)
Today was the best day. One of those days that your lesson goes exactly like you want it to, the kids are amazed at what you're doing, and it all just falls into place.
The first part of the day that was so awesome was related to the fact that is was International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I've been looking forward to Talk Like a Pirate Day for awhile for two reasons. Reason #1...my son has an awesome pirate hat that I looked forward to wearing to school. I also had an old Pi Day shirt (Pi-Rate, When Good Numbers Go Bad) to wear...so perfect!
Reason #2....I had this idea this summer of making a pirate name generator. I figure I could make up a problem (I used an order of operations problem) and the kids could roll dice, and plug the numbers into the problem. The answer to the problem then generated the kids' pirate names. So for example, in the first problem, the kids rolled 4 numbers and plugged them into this expression (___ + ___)^2 + ___*___. So let's say you rolled 4, 2, 3 and 5 then your answer would be 51. Then I had a table that told them different names for different number ranges. So 51 meant the first part of your name was "Thieving".
The first part of the day that was so awesome was related to the fact that is was International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I've been looking forward to Talk Like a Pirate Day for awhile for two reasons. Reason #1...my son has an awesome pirate hat that I looked forward to wearing to school. I also had an old Pi Day shirt (Pi-Rate, When Good Numbers Go Bad) to wear...so perfect!
Reason #2....I had this idea this summer of making a pirate name generator. I figure I could make up a problem (I used an order of operations problem) and the kids could roll dice, and plug the numbers into the problem. The answer to the problem then generated the kids' pirate names. So for example, in the first problem, the kids rolled 4 numbers and plugged them into this expression (___ + ___)^2 + ___*___. So let's say you rolled 4, 2, 3 and 5 then your answer would be 51. Then I had a table that told them different names for different number ranges. So 51 meant the first part of your name was "Thieving".
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| Click on the picture if you're interested in purchasing this pirate name generator. |
My pirate name generator had two parts. My absolute favorite nickname of the day was Salty Fishlips! Some of the other awesome nicknames: Parrot Plankwalker, One-Eyed Devil, Jolly Dog, Bearded Cutlass, Gold-Toothed Buaccaneer....it was a blast! And the kids got a little bit of order of operations practice in. As I walked around, I really enjoyed hearing students explain to their classmates how to do the problem as they tried to get their pirate name.
The only disappointment was that I really wanted a name that involved Scurvy Legs or Plankwalker, and the dice never let that happen for me!
Now, the other really awesome part of today's lesson was the part where I showed the kids how to use a spreadsheet....and they got it, and they were as amazed as I thought they should be at the power of spreadsheets. But I'll leave that for another post!
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