Friday Afternoon Lifesavers – the Teacher’s Best Friend; Part 7, Twins, an Exploration in Congruence and Symmetry
Friday Afternoon Lifesavers are exactly what they sound like: at the end of the week when you and your students are running out of gas, these activities come to the rescue. They are mathematical, engaging, fun, and give the teacher a much-needed break. One way to help kids become better problem solvers is to pose [...]
Friday Afternoon Lifesavers – the Teacher’s Best Friend; Part 6, The Game of Hex
Friday Afternoon Lifesavers are exactly what they sound like: at the end of the week when you and your students are running out of gas, these activities come to the rescue. They are mathematical, engaging, fun, and give the teacher a much-needed break. INTRODUCTION: Hex is a board game played on a grid made of [...]
KenKen Construction – Building Puzzles in the Classroom
My classes spent part of the today creating their own KenKen puzzles. The enthusiasm and results exceeded my expectations. Here is the five-step process we used: 1. Draw a 4×4 grid. You can use a 5-1/2” x 8-1/2” scratch paper (1/2 normal size) and have kids create a 4″ square. Then subdivide this into sixteen [...]
KenKen Conundrum – Solution of Permutations on a 4×4 Grid
We have the solution to the KenKen Conundrum posed recently. I asked my students to solve the following problem, and several of them succeeded. The original question was, “How many different arrangements (permutations) of the integers 1, 2, 3, 4 are possible in a 4×4 grid such as KenKen? Several people commented to the post, [...]
Friday Afternoon Lifesavers – the Teacher’s Best Friend; Part 1, Equation Search
Friday Afternoon Lifesavers are exactly what they sound like: at the end of the week when you and your students are running out of gas, these activities come to the rescue. They are mathematical, engaging, fun, and give the teacher a much-needed break. Equation Search can be used with many different levels of students. Its [...]
Triple Nine Wall Clock – Student Work
Here are almost two dozen clocks made of nothing but nines! Students use three 9′s instead of traditional numerals for the clock faces. Click the graphic below to view these neat products of student creativity. I’m using Google’s image hosting service, Picasa, to post these images online. It’s a free service that’s easy to use [...]
Triple Nine Wall Clock – Answers for a Great Lesson Plan
My classes just finished working on their Triple Nine Wall Clocks and would like to share some of their solutions for getting the integers from one through twelve. They found several ways to find most of the clock numbers, and your students likely will also. They turned in their projects today. Once I’ve scanned and [...]
Triple Nine Wall Clock – a Timely Student Math Challenge for Clockwatchers
Here’s a neat challenge for your students: Ask them to find a way to represent each of the positive integers from 1 through 12 using exactly three 9′s. This puzzle is a variation of the Four 4′s puzzle: Write each of the positive integers using exactly four 4′s. Some sample answers include the following. 1 [...]
KenKen – a Classroom Champ, Student Stories, and Web Kendoku
KenKen is a surefire winner in the classroom – my students eat them up like candy. During the last two regular weeks before final exams I used the 6×6 KenKen from the New York Times website, Easier and Medium versions, with my students. I can always tell when I’ve got a great lesson plan because [...]
STAR (Standardized) Test Final Exam PowerPoint Project
Here’s a project my students are working on as we head into our preparation for fall final exams. This is a way to practice for the California Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) test in April of next year. What follows is the directions I give my students. ——————————— STAR Fall Final Exam PowerPoint Project Description [...]
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