Counting on Fingers (Number Sense Activity)

Posted on February 28, 2014 by Squarehead Teachers

I love this math activity. It’s genius on so many levels! This would help students with addition and subtraction, but also to teach “the 9’s trick” with multiplication! It would be a great introductory/review activity at the beginning of the year, especially to have each student trace their own hands and make one of these themselves. (source)

I know many parents (and some teachers) don’t like it when kids use their fingers to count or do math. Many see it as a sign of weakness of lack of understanding. However, each time you allow a child to use their fingers (or a hundreds chart or multiplication chart, for that matter) to get the right answer, you’re providing them an opportunity to discover and work for the CORRECT answer. Eventually kids will learn their facts from repetition or they’ll get tired of being the only one without them memorized and they’ll fix the problem. After all, speed isn’t what’s important in math. YES, it definitely helps and it has clear advantages, but it’s not the end-all, be-all. There, I’m done with my soap box; I’ll put it away now. 🙂

Inquiry Lesson: Sieve of Eratosthenes (Prime Numbers)

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Squarehead Teachers

A friend of mine uses this lesson to teach her students about prime numbers, and prime factorization. (Note the lesson plan’s author is also named Mindy!). I’ve tried it with 6th graders and it’s pretty clear cut. Each student gets to work with a different number, creating a good learning experience for all. Here’s the lesson: Math Inquiry Lesson

If you’re not familiar with the Sieve of Eratosthenes, here’s the Wikipedia article.

Hundreds Chart Worksheet: 10 More Than/10 Less Than

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Squarehead Teachers

I absolutely love this idea. I’ve done two other worksheets with this same idea (click here and click here to see them) and I’ve found it to be really successful. It’s super important to get kids familiar with the hundreds chart. Hopefully children will be so familiar with it that they can make their own hundreds chart on a piece of scratch paper during a test (since kids don’t get a printed hundreds chart on their standardized tests).Click here to see my third 10 more that/10 less than hundreds chart worksheet: hundreds chart- more than- less than OWL

3D Shapes Review (Geometry)

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Squarehead Teachers

Here are some review pages (half sheet; so run off only half the number of students in your class and cut the sheets in half). These pages review names of 3D geometric shapes (cube, rectangular prism, sphere, etc.) as well as parts of 2- and 3D shapes (vertices, edges, etc.).

Click here for the free printable PDFs:
3D Shapes Review 1
3D Shapes Review 2

Identifying Parts of Shapes

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Squarehead Teachers

Need a quick review of angles, vertices, shape names, etc? Well, here’s a half sheet for you to give your students. It would be great for a math warm-up activity, since it isn’t very long.

Click here for the free math printable worksheet (PDF): Identifying Parts of Shapes

Shapes Worksheet

Posted on January 9, 2014 by Squarehead Teachers

Here’s a practice page for reviewing/identifying parts of geometric shapes (angles, sides, vertices, parallel lines, etc). Click here for the free printable PDF: Shapes Rock

Chip Method for Teaching Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division

Posted on January 7, 2014 by Squarehead Teachers

Are your students struggling with addition, subtraction, multiplication or division? These videos explain it in a method that may just do the trick for your confused learners:

Place Value (Number Disks With Place Value Charts) by the NY Common Core Mathematics Project

Teaching Math (Child Narrated) by Kid Snippets

Basic Fraction Practice – Winter Worksheet

Posted on January 2, 2014 by Squarehead Teachers

What do you do to add some fun to your classroom after the holidays are over? It’s to early to bring Valentines into the picture, so what now? I say continue to use winter themed stuff. Because we can! Here’s my “picture fractions” worksheet for winter. Basically, it teaches kids to focus on what they have (numerator) compared to the whole collection (denominator). Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!