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The Dregg Disaster

I wrote a book!

We have the story edits finalized and it is officially available for pre-order, which is pretty crazy. I WROTE A BOOK! It will be officially available sometime this year (looking like October), and I hope that my vision for this book translates to a fun, rigorous, Algebra 1 review. I am filled with so many emotions! I’m thrilled to share this vision of gamified math with readers, and I am so excited to actually hold something in my hand after the countless hours and frustrations that it took to put all the pieces of this project together. It’s been two and a half years since I first started working on this book as a side-project to my teaching job, which is a long time.

Enough time -in fact- to get engaged, cut my hair into a mullet, change jobs and move to a new country.

Most of all though, I cannot wait to see how students connect with it. I hope that students that already love math will find a book of puzzles that speaks a language that they understand. I hope that reluctant math learners will find a story that motivates them to learn new things.

Here’s a link to the book on the CYOA website, and it’s also on Amazon, if you want to help Bezos go back to space:

I don’t think that there has ever been a book quite like this one, so I made a few FAQ’s

Q: Is it a math book, or is it a Choose Your Own Adventure book?

A: Yes? Both. It has pictures, it has a silly adventure narrative with an evil corporation, talking animals, laser robots, shrink rays and mysterious portals. It also has Algebra-1 level math problems (and a free workbook download where kids can show their work and get more practice on each type of math problem that shows up in the story).

Here is a picture of what we are working with on the first page:

As you can see, there is a narrative section, and below that, a math problem

Students need to solve the math problem, and the the answer is the page where the story continues. The solution on this page is 13, so you would turn to page 13 to continue reading. Students will need to practice their algebra 1 skills to navigate through the book.

Q: ??? What ???

A: This book works like a normal CYOA book, with math as the connective tissue. The page numbers are the answers to the problems in the book. Read some story. Solve a math problem. Continue to a new page.

It is broken into four chapters. Each chapter includes death endings and choices that the reader will need to make to take on the nefarious Dregg Corporation. In addition, the types of math problems change from chapter to chapter. The first chapter focuses on equations, the second focuses on slope and lines, the third is quadratics, and the fourth is data and frequency tables. Every pathway through each chapter hits the same sequence of math problems, regardless of choices made by the reader.

Or maybe you die. It’s a CYOA book.

Every pathway follows the exact same sequence of math standards, but contains different story choices. The answer to each problem leads you to the next page in the story. New page, new story and new math skill.

Q: What if I get stuck?

A: Each chapter has an “Adventure Advice” section that explains the problem types found in each chapter, and serves as an answer key. If you don’t understand every problem type in the book, that’s okay! This is intended as a learning resource.

THANK YOUS. I did not do this alone.

Thanks to Shannon, Rachel, Melissa and Julie for helping this book take shape. I am very grateful to Shannon in particular for seeing value in this idea, and helping it to reach the finish line. Thanks too to my math brother, Chris Bakke for helping pick the math standards, and create some of the math problems. I still haven’t seen most of the art, but thanks too to the artists. Eoin Coveney did the cover, and Maria Pesado did all the illustrations inside the book, AND she re-drew all the math problems so that they pop. I hope that you like what we have been able to create!

Color-by-Number Math

Color-by-number! With my writing, I have been playing around with ways to make the answer to a math problem something that is more interactive. Color by number is one thing that I stumbled upon last year, and I think it’s got some mad potential for older learners. (I freely admit that I am not the first teacher to create this. There are lots of TPT resources and freebies online, but they are generally reserved for younger grades and practicing basic operations. This resource I built out for my 8th graders practicing equations. The image is from a google image search and not my own):

The equations that students must solve are presented on the left. Once they solve an equation, they can color in the spaces with the corresponding color. (For example, the solution to 63=3(1-4n) is -5, so any space with a -5 on it should get colored in yellow.)

I used it as a part of a review project after we had spent a couple weeks solving equations. I put out a big bowl of colored pencils and let them dig in. took about 35 minutes to complete.

I also spent a two days where students built their own color by number math art. I gave parameters for the types of problems that they used, and asked them to build something creative. Some were better than others, but I absolutely need to share this color by number piece from Luz, cuz it rips.

It’s Pluto with some of the members of k-pop band BTS. Why are they all together? Ask Luz.

I’ve been sitting on this post for a WHILE because it is going to be a big part of my new Choose Your Own Adventure book, Fraction Action: Double Feature, and I didn’t want you vultures to steal all my good ideas 😉

Here is a downloadable pdf version of the “equations workshop” sheet shown above, and it has the problems in bigger boxes to be printed on the back.

color-by-numberDownload

Here is the powerpoint version if you want to add math that works better with your students! Enjoy!

color-by-number-slidesDownload

Exponent Operation

I made this little operation application a few years ago in Seattle. It was fun, and I used it every year for practicing exponent rules, but I never ended up building other stuff for other units. It would be very easy to do so.

WARNING: this game requires the game operation, which has lots of little pieces, and batteries. This game is fun, but not something that I think scales very well to a class of more than 12 or 15 kids.

Anyway, you group kids, and have them take turns playing the game operation. If they successfully remove a piece from the board, the OTHER students must solve the corresponding problem from the sheet below.

I tried to attach the harder problems to the harder pieces from the gameboard to remove. There is also an answer key in the documents below that I printed out in a different color so kids could check their work.

Scrub up! It’s surgery time!

operation-pdfDownload
editable operation-pptDownload

Fear the Factor

I wanted to share my favorite classroom game for those days at the end of the semester where you need to fill some time with some lite math. (It’s my 5×5) It’s one that I stole from my old camp buddy Garrett Mandeville. He’s a sweetie, and he shared this game with me my first year teaching. It’s a simple one to run, and the kids that I have played it with at every level have LOVED it. It didn’t have a name when he gave it to me, but I slapped a 2001 TV reference on it, and posted it here for internet points.

The setup is pretty simple. You think of a number, and write it on a post-it that goes in your pocket. The kids get a handout. All that’s on it is a 1-100 grid. I generally print them four on a page so you can play a few rounds.

Students are in groups of 4, and their task is to guess your number. BUT they get some help from factors. Each team gets a turn and their turn goes like this:

1: They get to ask about one factor. (example: Is 5 a factor of your number?)

2: They get one guess (example: Is 37 your number?)

If they guess the number, they win! If not, it moves on to the next team. The first round, I play along on the whiteboard, crossing off the numbers that are eliminated with each factor and with each guess. Subsequent rounds, I only answer questions, and they are in charge of filling their boards, and tracking the answers that I give to each of the groups. This makes it so that every student plays along during each team’s turn. Below is what a student board might look like as they follow along with the guesses from each team.


A few notes:

  1. It is good to pick a number with a few factors to make the game more interesting (32, 48, 90, 45, 42 etc.)
  2. Each round lasts about 5 groups.
  3. I usually have starbursts on hand as prizes. (If you don’t want the kids begging for a pink ones, I have a workaround for that that I stole from my old friend Laura. I usually grab one at random. Each winner can either take the hidden candy as is, or guess the color. A successful guess means that they win one of each color, and an unsuccessful guess they get nothing)
  4. I keep a stack of these grids on hand as an emergency lesson. If the internet craps out during a Desmos lesson or if something else unexpected happens, this can fill 30 minutes with kids of every level, and it’s a snap to setup.
  5. Printables and ppt below!
fear-factorDownload
fear-factor-handoutDownload

Hi-5, Low-5 (Connect 4)

I saw a copy of connect 4 in the duty-free store at the airport the other day, and it got my mind turning.

First, I should have bought connect 4 it at the airport. No dutys.

Second, it inspired me to make this integer practice game for my 6th/7th graders to practice with next year.

Rules are pretty similar to the original game. Players take turns dropping tokens into the gameboard. There are a few wrinkles to this version. One player uses the black tokens (positive) and the other player uses the (negative) red tokens. Right now, the set I made has 4 copies each of values from 1-5, plus a zero for each player.

Each player is trying to place their tiles so they create a 5 token set (vertical horizontal or diagonal) with the greatest value. Red is trying to create the greatest negative number and black is trying to create the biggest positive number. It will be almost impossible to get five of your tokens in a row, so your score will likely include one or more of the other player’s tiles. Do you use your 5 token to build your own score, or play it defensively to block the other player? In the example gameboard below, the positive player was able to score 13. The negative player got to negative 15, so negative beats positive. Low-5 wins! Down low!

That’s about it. A lot of the best math thinking for this game comes from just looking at the board at the end and trying to optimize your score, but there is some really good strategy throughout the game too. Where do you use your fives? Where do you hide your zero and ones?

If you are interested in trying out this new connect 4 variant, I would love some help play-testing this bad boy. It’s fun, but there are almost certainly some other wrinkles that would make it even better. HMU with some feedback. Below are some printables so you can make your own integer connect 4 board at home. I laminated the little circles and then attached them to the tokens with Elmer’s glue.

I ALSO have been playing around with our school’s 3D printer, and I included some tinkercad files for pieces if you want to print out the pieces (with way less gluing!). The trial run came out pretty cool!

connect-4-materialsDownload

Negative tokens for a 3D printer: https://www.tinkercad.com/things/84fodAocHtN

Positive tokens for a 3D printer: https://www.tinkercad.com/things/g0lQZxJttw0

Segment Says

Shout out to Patricio, who came up with the idea for this game.

We are currently doing a little geometry mini-unit in 8th grade, and one of my students had this idea for a vocab game. We ran it today, and it rules.

It’s “Simon Says” but with some geometry themed prompts. Some of the ones that we used today were as follows:

“Segment says: Make a line” (lines continue forever in both directions, so students point with their fingers)

“Segment says: Make your line steeper.”

“Segment says: Make a line segment” (line segments terminate at both ends, so students ball up their fists)

“Segment says: Make a ray that points to the door” (One hand pointing, one hand is a fist)

“Segment says: Make a 90 degree angle”

“Segment says: Make a line with a slope of zero” (undefined works great too.)

“Segment says: Find a friend and make supplementary angles.”

“Make an obtuse angle.”

You’re out! I didn’t say “Segment says!”

Telephone

This collaborative math routine is based on the game “telephone.” Telephone, like that game where you whisper a word to the person next to you, and it goes around in a circle until it gets back to you. This routine works much the same way, but it uses math.

The rules are pretty simple. Print out strips of paper so that each kid in the group has a unique problem. For example, I used this strip for graphing last semester with my 8th graders.

Somebody made a small mistake in the second equation.

Each student graphs the equation on their strip of paper. When everybody in the group is ready, everybody folds their strip along the first line (so that the equation is hidden) and passes the strip of paper to the next student. Now every student has a piece of paper with a line graphed on it, and they must turn that line back into an equation.

Fold, pass, graph. Fold, pass, equation. Fold, pass, graph. etc.

At the end, have the kids unfold their strips of paper, and if their group ALL did their part correctly, the equation at the bottom should match the equation at the top. Below is a “before” and an “after” from a linear inequalities set:

Image

It’s a great routine that works with any math skill that works forwards AND backwards. The ones that I have used with my classes are linked below.

They are word docs (so that they are editable) but printing to PDF first will help them print better. Hope you dig it!

factoring-and-foilDownload
graphing-lines-1Download
graphing-lines-2Download
improper-fractions-and-mixed-numbersDownload
plotting-points-1Download
plotting-points-2Download
graphing-inequalities-1Download
graphing-inequalities-2Download

Information Gap Math

A few years back, I attended the NCTM conference in Seattle and had my mind blown a little bit at the Illustrative Math session I attended. I loved a few of their routines, but my favorite was one that I had never heard of called “Information Gap”. They blog about it here.

Info gap essentially turns any word problem into a collaborative partner routine. You separate the essential information into two cards, and students are not allowed to show their partner what is on their card. They can ask questions, and even read what is on their card, but it is not possible to find the correct solution without the help of their partner. They must find some way to navigate this “information gap” together. I loved the discussion that this routine fostered, and the level of rigor that you are able to put into a problem without turning students off immediately. It transforms a dry word problem into a puzzle that the students must piece together in order to find a solving strategy.

I couldn’t find an easy way to search for resources for this specific activity on the IM website (that might be user error), so I ended up building out my own routine and my own problem sets for a bunch of spots in my Algebra 1 curriculum. I have started making some problem sets for Geometry too (arc length and triangle proofs are included below) but I will hopefully be adding pythag, angles, and triangle trig problem sets soon.

This routine forces collaboration, and I reinforce that with middle schoolers by asking them that they show their work on this note-catcher with different colored ink.

I used this routine with great success at my school in Seattle, and the two times that I have tried it since moving to Colombia have worked pretty well too. (my classes are bigger, so I did away with the note catcher. They solve on whiteboards now). I like to print the “question” sheet on colored paper, and pre-staple and pre-cut so that I can quickly hand out each new problem to groups as they finish the problem prior. It’s worth the prep.

I also try to give groups problems in a random order so that they are working together against each problem, and not trying to race other groups in the class. When this routine works, your main job is to monitor, give feedback and check their thinking against an answer key. Here’s some stuff I made. I hope it’s helpful!

Resources:

Editable powerpoint slides:

info-gap-slides-1Download

PDF versions of:

info-gap-handout-1Download
fractions-info-gapDownload
similarity-info-gapDownload
linear-pattern-info-gapDownload
exponential-pattern-info-gapDownload
systems-info-gapDownload
frequency-table-info-gapDownload
arc-and-sector-info-gapDownload
triangle-congruency-info-gapDownload

Greed

I don’t even know where this game came from. I looked up greed dice games online, and this is not what popped up, so bear with me. This game is a great little strategy/luck game, and all you need is a couple of dice.

The rules are pretty simple.

-One player rolls both dice. If you are in the game, you get the points on the dice. 5 and a 2 is worth seven points. First to 100 wins. (Or, you can play to 200 for a longer game.)

-Doubles are worth double. For example: double fours are worth 16.

-BUT BE CAREFUL. If either dice comes up with a “1,” all standing players lose whatever points that they have earned that round.

-This is why the game is called greed. If the first three rolls are “5/2” and then “4/4” and then “3/6,” any players standing up have earned 7, 16 and 9 points for a total of 32 points. At any point, a player can leave the game to protect the points that they have earned. A “greedy” player will stay stay in the game longer, and risk their points against the dice.

-Once you decide to leave the game, you get to keep the points that you have earned, BUT you can’t earn any more points until a “1” is rolled and a new player starts rolling the dice. You are safe, but you might miss out on points.

-(One last rule: Double Ones on the dice cause all standing players to lose ALL points earned over all rounds. It is a fun hail-mary rule that can totally change the game)

I learned this game from a roommate in Seattle, and I have returned to it often. It’s a quick travel game, and it works with 2 players all the way up to a class full of kids.

With a class, I like to have the kids track their own scores and they show that they are in the game by standing up. (They sit to show that they are out of the game). It’s a fun little game if you find yourself with 20 minutes in class!

April Fools Special: Rory.

I want to introduce you to my friend Rory.

YEARS ago, I was working in Denver Public Schools, and it was April Fools Day. One of our science teachers had quit mid-year, and one of my favorite assistant principals, Nettie Welk, was looking to hire a replacement. The search was not going well, so I made the worst possible resume that I could come up with. I named him:

I gave Rory a perplexing work history, with a very helpful graph:

The “gravity designs” one was already on the resume template that I downloaded, and I thought it was funny. So I left it in. Rory has extensive education history.

Rory also chose to leave this disclaimer at the end of the resume

Finally, I created a fake gmail address to submit the resume from. I believe it was rory420@gmail.com.

It might say a little too much about the quality of available educator that Nettie wasn’t quite sure that it was a joke right away. Here is the resume if you have an admin looking to hire for next year

roryresume2017Download