This week's #SundayFunday topic is favorite math activities. There are so many great tasks out there that people have shared and that's part of what makes the MTBoS so great! Here are just a few of my favorites.
Generic Activities Adaptable to Any Topic:
I love doing Dan Meyer's 3-Act Math Tasks. Engaging students in asking questions and determining what information they need to know to answer THEIR questions is so important. I have used several of the lessons found here, and have also tried creating my own (I hope to blog about one of mine soon that I call the kayak story - ultimately it's a volume of composite figures problem, but I have used it successfully with students in 7th grade up through Geometry and Algebra 2 by changing the information I share with them in Act 2).
Andrew Stadel's Estimation180 questions are a big hit with my students. I usually use them as the Do Now when we don't have a full week of school to complete our regular weekly questions.
One
of my favorite activities for rote practice is question stacks. I first heard about question stacks from Sarah Carter. This is a great self-checking activity as students cycle through the questions; if they don't complete the loop or can't find their answer, they know that they made a mistake somewhere. I recently blogged about my Evaluating Expressions Question Stack here.
Always, Sometimes, Never (I've seen quite a few examples from multiple sources) is another activity I like. Students really have to be able to clarify what they know in order to sort statements into always true, sometimes true, or never true. I created a version with statements about negative exponents to use with my eighth graders a few years ago that usually makes an appearance every year.
Lesson-Specific Activities:
I love playing Slope Dude Says from Sarah Carter with my students when we first learn about slope and how to classify it. This is one of those activities that my students ask to do repeatedly!
I tried Dance, Dance, Transversal from Jessica for the first time with my students last year to practice angle pair relationships. I didn't execute the activity as well as I would have liked, but I do think it has the potential to be a great activity in my room. I'm looking forward to trying it again this year. Here's another post about how to implement it.
Basically, any lesson/activity that gets kids up and moving is a win in my book!
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