Sprouts is a paper-and-pencil game that can be enjoyed simply by both adults and children. Yet it also can be analyzed for its significant mathematical properties. It was invented by mathematicians John Horton Conway and Michael S. Paterson at Cambridge University in the early 1960s. Setup is even simpler than the popular Dots and Boxes […]
Three men’s morris is an abstract strategy game played on a three by three board (counting lines) that is similar to tic-tac-toe. Rules Each player has three pieces. The winner is the first player to align their three pieces on a line drawn on the board. There are 3 horizontal lines, 3 vertical lines […]
Tsoro Yematatu is a two-player that comes from Zimbabwe. Players first drop their three pieces onto the board, and then move those pieces to create a 3 in-a-row which wins the game. What makes this game more fun than traditional Tic-Tac-Toe is that pieces can jump over each other (without capture) which adds an extra dimension in the […]
NIM is a wonderful mathematics strategy game that has been around forever. At its most basic version, two players alternate turns taking objects from one or more piles. For each turn, a player removes at least one object. The winner of the game is the player who picks up the last object. Whenever I need […]
At the start of the school year, I came across this tweet by @MathEqualsLove… This Week’s Puzzle: Equilateral Triangle. This puzzle is always a favorite! https://t.co/tPyH2w2spF #mtbos #iteachmath #teach180 #puzzlingclassroom pic.twitter.com/8Se6RJJepj — Sarah Carter (@mathequalslove) August 26, 2019 I loved the Equilateral Puzzle, so I finally got around to sharing it with teachers during a […]
We have long known that the most important aspect of schooling affecting student achievement is the effectiveness of the teacher in the classroom (Wright, Horn, & Sanders, 1997). So then, what exactly do effective teachers do? Two well-known people, Hattie and Marzano, have long thought about this very question. Both have created long laundry lists […]
Here are the past problems posted for #TapeDiagramTuesday during the 2019-2020 school year! September 10, 2019 September 17, 2019 September 24, 2019 October 1, 2019 October 8, 2019 October 15, 2019 October 22, 2019 October 29, 2019 November 5, 2019 November 12, 2019 November 19, 2019 November 26, 2019 December 3, 2019 December 10, 2019 […]
2023-2024 Archive problems 2022-2023 Archive problems 2021-2022 Archive problems 2020-2021 Archive problems Word problems. Ugh! How often have you heard that in your classroom. Heck…I certainly heard it uttered numerous times in my own classroom. In fact, there are many times in which I was the one doing the complaining. Oh, how I wish […]
I recently was hanging out with some 6th grade teachers and, as often happens with teachers, we began talking shop. “Fractions…ugh”, said one teacher. “I’m getting into dividing fractions. I don’t know how to explain it to my kids any better than KEEP-CHANGE-FLIP”, she confessed. “I don’t teach that algorithm, because it never makes sense […]
I recently visited a 3rd grade class to share with the teacher ideas for teaching multiplication facts. She was particularly frustrated that her students were struggling with the larger facts – the sixes, sevens, eights, and nines. It was clear that while students had experience connecting multiplication with the idea of equal groups, students did […]