FUN WITH STICKMAN

Be prepared to lose hours of your life to doodling once you click over to Draw a Stickman. How could you use this in the classroom? To teach and reinforce vocabulary for ELL students, to assess the following of written directions for children with disabilities, to inspire a reluctant writer, to teach young students how to use a mouse, to practice the drawing of [read more…]

Fraction Bingo

In the final week of blogging about the “how” or process of differentiation, I am featuring active learning techniques. Today I am featuring a game for math teachers. Check out It’s My Blog, Y’all to find materials you can download to create your own fractions bingo game. If this game is too complex or not complex enough, you can get ideas for creating a [read more…]

It’s time to (groan) assign a group project

Do your students dread working on group projects? Do you spend too much time trying to figure out who will and won’t work well together?  We found this great visual on Math Teacher Mambo’s blog; it provides a rationale for group work and some gentle encouragement to practice communication and social skills. We think this tool is a great way to break the ice and help your anxious, shy, or reluctant students deal with the anxiety or uncertainty of [read more…]

A math debate?

Debate the hundred chart. Make picture puzzles. Play arrow games. You will find over 30 ways to use the hundred chart on Let’s Play Math, a blog created by a creative homeschooling mom. These ideas are so much fun and so varied, as well. You are sure to find several to use in a classroom of diverse learners.

Consider using some of these as math stations or putting a few of them [read more…]

Models from maps

The Teaching Channel today to share a great active learning lesson on making three-dimensional models. This detailed lesson illustrates how to focus on vocabulary during an activity-based lesson and how to create an experience that focuses on problem solving, collaboration, design and more. This is a complex lesson but so many different types of learners could participate in [read more…]

Rotating word problems

Thanks to Ashleigh at Ashleigh’s Education Journey for this “get it off the page” idea for learning about word problems. She turned the tables on her young students and had them rotate through the room to work on math problems. Students, however, were not solving problems, they were writing them! I really like the idea of [read more…]

Walk about in algebra

Gina Wilson’s blog, All Things Algebra, is a valuable resource for math teachers in upper grades. The game that I am featuring today is one of her many ideas for making math fun, collaborative, and active. She calls it the Translating Walk About and it involves splitting her students into teams and asking them to examine expressions/equations/inequalities and translate them into their own words (a great Common Core Standards lesson).

Jump over to the blog to get all of the [read more…]

Story problem strategies

The Common Core State Standards are designed to help students apply the math they know to solve problems. One way to achieve this is to support them in decoding the language and structure of word problems. Today’s featured post will help you do just that. Hop over to Math Coach’s Corner and learn how to [read more…]

Don’t forget the families

In this post from Corkboard Connections on teaching parents about the Common Core, Laura Candler reminds us that differentiation is not just about the decisions we make in classrooms. In order to be effective in meeting the needs of all learners, we have to educate parents too. Parents need to understand learning standards so that they can help with [read more…]

Number sense in kindergarten

There are so many ideas for teaching number sense on Kinder Doodles, an idea-rich blog for teachers of young children. Pop over to see a handful of ways to help students learn more about number values, relationships, and uses. You will find something for every type of learner on this post including a [read more…]