Are your students food motivated? How long does it take them to notice if you have a bag of candy in the room? Mine can sniff it out like bears! Let’s capitalize on that motivation by using fun-sized bags to create and substitute into variable expressions. What’s in the bag? Any single-serving bag with aRead more
Why is factoring so important? Students enter our math classrooms with a wide range of skills. Many of those skills are essential for success in their current courses. Spending the time in your classroom to teach the essential skills can really pay off. It gives students a chance to show what they know or fillRead more
How to start substituting values into expressions Now that your students have been introduced to the terms variables, coefficients, and expressions it is time to start substituting values into the expressions. We can continue working with our picture tiles before going directly to calculations using symbolic representations to further develop their understanding of variables andRead more
How to introduce variable expressions to algebra students Are you ready to introduce variables to your class? Thinking about diving right into the textbook and starting students with the printed problems on the page? They are just letters and symbols that represent unknowns so this should be no problem, right?! For some students, yes, thatRead more
Here is a great activity to teach one variable equations using Excel (Google Sheets, etc.). This is a great activity for 9th and 10th graders completing Algebra 1/Integrated math, or for 8th graders working on one variable equations. Why Use Real-World Math Connections to Teach One Variable Equations? When working on topics such as howRead more
This is a great activity to get ALL of your students learning about and using coordinate grids. My students had a blast doing this activity. It’s especially great for students who are tactile/kinesthetic learners. Click here to read our previous blog post about how to create a coordinate grid with your class. Materials Coordinate GridRead more
To kick off the second semester, and to give my math students a team-building experience, I decided to do a hands-on activity with coordinate grids. I did this with a mixed-ability group of 5th and 6th graders. Set up I put a sample coordinate grid up on the document camera, and told the students thatRead more