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Category: Number and Operations

Power Packs and Math Homework

Power Packs and Math Homework

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Everyone loves to play games. They’re engaging, motivating, and fun. And from an educational perspective, they can be a powerful learning tool. Here’s what games can do:

  • reinforce skills learned in the classroom
  • develop mental math skills
  • encourage strategic thinking
  • foster mathematical communication
  • build confidence
  • engage parents

But one of the best things about games is that they offer meaningful practice in a way where kids actually want to do math. That’s because games, by their very nature, are fun. It’s not too hard to entice a child to play a game. And because of that, games offer important practice in a way that worksheets can’t.

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What Do You Notice? poster – Crossed Lines

What Do You Notice? poster – Crossed Lines

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Skills:
K-2: colors, counting, even/odd numbers
3-5: multiplication, even/odd numbers, multiples of 3, square numbers

Crossed lines is an easy strategy for learning multiplication facts. The horizontal and vertical lines represent the factors in the multiplication problem. For example, in the problem 4 x 3, students would draw 4 horizontal lines and then intersect them with 3 vertical lines as is shown in the last example above. The intersection of the lines is the answer to the problem. So for 4 x 3, there would be 12 intersections.

To make the strategy more visible, I used colored dots to highlight the intersections. I was deliberate in the colors I chose. The green dots represent an even product and the pink dots represent an odd product. Notice how all the products are multiples of 3. At a higher level, older students may notice that 3 x 3 makes a square and 9 is a square number.

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Family Math Night Collaborative Project: Space Invaders

Family Math Night Collaborative Project: Space Invaders

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I’m excited to share with you my latest Family Math Night Collaborative Project: Space Invaders. Here’s a photo of the final result. (There are actually 3 aliens to choose from in the lesson plan. This is alien #1).

Here’s some of the background information I include in the lesson plan:

In 1978, Tomohiro Nishikado, a Japanese video game developer, released his video game Space Invaders. It was such a popular game that it helped catapult video gaming into a global industry. The pixelated aliens in the game became a popular icon.

Pixels are small single-colored squares that make up images in computer graphics. These pixels are displayed as a bitmap, a rectangular matrix of dots. These pixels, sometimes called dots, are each assigned a specific color and are arranged along the horizontal axis (x-coordinate) and vertical axis (y-coordinate) of the matrix.
Computer graphics have come a long way in the last decade and look much more sophisticated today than they did back in 1978. But back when graphics were first being designed on computers, they had a “boxy” look. That’s because the screen displays (screen resolutions) were not as good as they are today.

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Homework the FUN Way

Homework the FUN Way

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Everyone loves to play games. They’re engaging, motivating, and fun. And from an educational perspective, they can be a powerful learning tool. Here’s what games can do:

  • reinforce skills learned in the classroom
  • develop mental math skills
  • encourage strategic thinking
  • foster mathematical communication
  • build confidence
  • engage parents

But one of the best things about games is that they offer meaningful practice in a way where kids actually want to do math. That’s because games, by their very nature, are fun. It’s not too hard to entice a child to play a game. And because of that, games offer important practice in a way that worksheets can’t.

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What Do You Notice? poster – Number Grid Puzzle

What Do You Notice? poster – Number Grid Puzzle

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Skills:
K-2: number recognition, pattern
3-5: pattern, addition

My youngest son visited the Basilica Sagrada Familia, a Roman Catholic Church in Barcelona, Spain and brought this pattern back for me as a gift. Here’s a photo of his gift: (And before you read the next paragraph where I describe the main pattern, you may want to discover your own patterns first.)

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