It’s a new school year and I’m already looking for new activities to use with my students, so that we can get to know each other and I can observe a little bit about their math skills. Today, I’m sharing with you a math icebreaker that will get students out of their seats and interacting with each other.

My students have come to love math centers. They call it "game time," but I know it is really a time where they can apply their newly learned math skills. One of the activities in the center focuses on a card game of factors and multiples. The theme of this activity is Blizzards. My students always get excited when it snows, so I thought having a game with a blizzard theme would get them excited about factors and multiples.

I have always found that teaching students about subtracting integers is one of the most difficult math topics. It’s something that seems very confusing for them. This post discusses an approach to adding and subtracting integers and rational numbers that I have found to be most helpful for struggling students. The download for this post is a graphic organizer that students can follow in order to practice adding and subtracting integers and rational numbers. It is the kind of scaffolding that can help students to learn the kind of thinking that is necessary to be successful at simplifying these expressions.

Developing number sense for students in the upper middle grades includes their understanding the difference between rational and irrational numbers. Irrational numbers have at times been controversial in the development of mathematics and can provide a great opportunity to tie math concepts in with history.

I am so glad that you found this math blog among all the possible sites you might have landed on through the Internet, and I hope you keep with me as I continue to develop the blog. What you will find here is a collection of standards-based math activities, thoughts on lesson planning, trends in K–­­8 mathematics teaching and learning, a focus on the mathematical practice standards, and connections to children’s literature that can be paired with math lessons.