Idea Galaxy

Adventures in Junior High and Mathematics

Math Teaching Tips

9 Operations with Scientific Notation Activities

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Are you looking for ways to practice operations with scientific notation? You’re in the right place. In this post I’ll share 9 10 practice activities you can immediately use in your classroom that support students effort in learning how to multiply, divide, add, and subtract numbers written in scientific notation.

You can also read more about how to plan out the teaching for this topic, or how to introduce operations with scientific notation through a discovery activity in two other posts I’ve written about teaching operations with scientific notation.  [Read more…] about 9 Operations with Scientific Notation Activities

Teaching Operations with Scientific Notation through Discovery

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After introducing students to scientific notation and converting from standard to scientific notation, it was time to move on to using the four operations with scientific notation. Once I chunked out the learning targets with “I Can” statements, I was ready to get things started. With this new topic, I again wanted to start with a discovery lab. I find my students so much more engaged over the whole unit when we start off with an introduction that asks students to discover first, before formal instruction. It gets them curious, which makes them much more invested in their own learning. I’m excited to share with you just how we started off this unit teaching operations with scientific notation through discovery. [Read more…] about Teaching Operations with Scientific Notation through Discovery

8 Scale Drawing Activities

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Looking for ideas on teaching scale drawings? You’re in the right place! Scale drawings can be so much fun for students, and they’re definitely a fun way to look at math. In this post you’ll find 8 engaging scale drawing activities to practice in your classroom. For even more scale drawing ideas & tips, check out this post about using I Can Statements to break down teaching scale drawings. Or, for a guide to introducing scale drawings through discovery & interactive notes, check out this post. The eight scale drawing activities below include independent practice opportunities, technology-based tools, review games, and enrichment activities. Let’s dig in! [Read more…] about 8 Scale Drawing Activities

Teaching Scale Drawings through Discovery

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Teaching scale drawings always seems like a fun, activity based concept to learn. But what makes it really important for students is that it helps them apply proportions in a real-life way. When they really understand scale drawings, they are also that much better at solving and understanding proportional relationships. I already talked about how I chunk out the learning targets for this skill here. And I’ve shared in an earlier post about my first experience teaching with a discovery lab. Now I’m excited to share with you the discovery lab and foldable notes I used to teach scale drawings and proportional relationships. [Read more…] about Teaching Scale Drawings through Discovery

Christmas Trivia Game for the Secondary Classroom

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One of my favorite school memories came from a high school chemistry teacher right before Christmas. Every year, he hosted a science themed Christmas trivia game. And it was a big deal. Classes competed against each other. Everyone looked forward to it. He really made it a special event. The questions were challenging and yet somehow (loosely) related to the science we were studying.

With my own classroom, I wanted to create a similar experience. A few years back I found the addictive trivia game Wits and Wagers. It was so much fun to play with family and friends, and I realized that it would make a great holiday game in my classroom. [Read more…] about Christmas Trivia Game for the Secondary Classroom