Students spend their whole lives working with positive numbers. Then one day we’re like, “Hey, guess what guys? Some numbers are negative. Surprise!” We then wonder why they have such a hard time acclimatizing to this newfound knowledge. How can we break this sad cycle? I find that for many students, if you want them to really understand what they’re doing with adding positive and negative integers, you have to do a lot of background building and even some unteaching from what they’re used to. [Read more…] about How to Make Adding Integers Stick Forever
Blog
Teaching Adding Integers through Discovery
Working with positive and negative integers is something that can throw students off at first. One of my favorite ways to introduce new topics is with a discovery lab. Why? Well, these activities help students face their misconceptions head on. Discovery labs are an ideal way to start a new topic because it helps students build their own conceptual model right from the get-go. Then, when you start the teaching and modeling, they have a place in their brain to put that new information. Today I’ll share with you how my students get introduced to adding positive and negative integers through a discovery lab approach. [Read more…] about Teaching Adding Integers through Discovery
12 Engaging Ways to Practice Adding Integers
Do your students have a difficult time remember how to add and subtract integers? Isn’t it maddening? I could get on my soap box and go on and on about how we should teach integers, or how we should start with negative numbers in kindergarten, but this is not a soap box kind of post 😉. Therefore, I’ll stick to making a list of amazing activities that will give your students a whole boatload of practice with adding and subtracting integers. [Read more…] about 12 Engaging Ways to Practice Adding Integers
8 iPad Apps to Make Your Math Summer School Awesome
Today let’s try to spice up summer school with some fun and engaging math apps. All of the iPad apps that I’m sharing here have a free version. Some of them have in app purchases and others do not. When I look at apps for my classroom, I tend to categorize them based on what part of learning they support. Some apps work for practice or application, and some as manipulatives. Read on to see apps for each of those categories! [Read more…] about 8 iPad Apps to Make Your Math Summer School Awesome
10 Tips and Tricks for Math Summer School
Summer school is a different world than regular school. In my 12 years of teaching middle school, I’ve been involved in some sort of summer school program 11 times. I’d describe my experience as varied when it comes to summer school. We’ve run programs for students who need to make up classes, extra boost classes for ELL students, and camp types to help engage students during the summer. One year, for example, we ran a 7th-8th grade Tech Camp where students got to use Virtual Reality, Breakout EDU, Club Invention, and Coding all while developing their math and problem solving skills. [Read more…] about 10 Tips and Tricks for Math Summer School
