Playlist: Bookmarks
Crossing Every Bridge Exactly Once (aka Eulerian Paths)
How can you cross each bridge in this city exactly once?
Squiggles Introduction
What do you see in this squiggle?
Squiggles Collection 1
Everyone starts with the same squiggle. No two drawings end up the same. What do you see?
Squiggles Collection 2
Everyone starts with the same squiggle. No two drawings end up the same. What do you see?
New Uses For A Chair
So, what can a chair be used for other than, you know, sitting in?
New Uses For A Pencil
So, what can a pencil be used for other than writing and drawing?
New Uses For An Aluminum Can
So, what CAN a CAN be used for other than storing liquids?
Geometry Image: Esplanade Theaters
What odd and interesting shapes can your students find in this geometric image?
Geometry Image: University Ave
What odd and interesting shapes can your students find in this geometric image?
Geometry Image: Victoria Conference Center
What odd and interesting shapes can your students find in this geometric image?
An Olympic Sized Pool and Jet Fuel (Episode 3)
How many times could you fill up a jet plane using the fuel that would fit in an olympic-sized pool?
An Olympic Sized Pool and 2 Liter Bottles (Episode 1)
How many 2 liter bottles could you fill up using the water in an olympic-sized pool?
Geometry Image: Skytree
What odd and interesting shapes can your students find in this geometric image?
Geometry Image: Steigerwald
What odd and interesting shapes can your students find in this geometric image?
What’s In My Brain!? Gold vs Wood
Some of these examples are conductors and some are insulators!
What’s the Pattern? Fraction Addition
Can your students figure out how to add fractions by looking for a pattern?
Find The Pattern: Multiply Fractions
What if you set the stage for students to discover how to multiply fractions?
Olympics: Medals by Population
Do big countries always have the most medals? Which smaller countries rank surprisingly high in the Olympics?
Mow A Lawn
How long would it take to mow a very large lawn with a push-mower?
Fizz Buzz: A Counting and Divisibility Game
Ready for a tricky counting and divisibility game?
Sets of Idioms Related to Numbers
Two sets of idioms related to numbers.
How Many Ways: Fraction Subtraction 234
How many different ways can you make this fraction subtraction statement true using only the digits one through nine?
How Many Ways: Fraction Addition 234
How many different ways can you make this fraction addition statement true using only the digits one through nine?
How Many Ways: Fractions Divide Equals 2/3
One equation. Digits one through nine. How many ways can you make it work?
How Many Ways: Fractions Multiply 2/3
How many different ways can you make this fraction multiplication statement true using only the digits one through nine?
How Many Ways: Divide Fractions Equal 1/4
How many different ways can you make this fraction division math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
How Many Ways: Multiply Fractions Equal 1/4
One equation. Digits one through nine. How many ways can you make it work?
How Many Ways: Fraction Subtraction Equals 1/2
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits zero through nine?
New Uses for a Paperclip
So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?
Ultimate (or Inception) Tic Tac Toe
What if each square on a Tic-Tac-Toe board had another Tic-Tac-Toe board inside of it?
A Lunar Survival Mission
A favorite of mine! This task is delightfully complex and ambiguous, forcing students to make choices without enough information and with no right answer. How will they survive on the moon for three days?
Cram
Try this a simple (but surprisingly strategic) grid-filling game!
Fractions: Decompose and Recompose
What if we took a fraction apart, then took those pieces apart, then recombined them, and then recombined those, arriving back to the original fraction?
Game: Number Scrabble
What if we played Tic-Tac-Toe with numbers and instead of three-in-a-row, we add up to 15? Well… then we’d have Number Scrabble!
Measurement: An Elephant
What if I told you that an elephant weighed a back-breaking 176,000? Could you figure out the unit I’m using? But… how many corgis would that be?
Measurement: A Long Movie
What if I told you a movie was a whopping 0.017 long? Could you figure out the unit I’m using? This lesson packs in strange measurements of time as well as tiny decimals.
Measurement: How Big is this Bathtub?
So, if I told you a bathtub holds 640 of water, which unit would make the most sense?
Measurement: How Old Is Mr. Byrd?
What if I told you that I’m 341,640 old? Could you figure out what unit I’m using? Hint: it’s not years!
Addition: 3 Digits Plus 2 Digits (Multiple Solutions)
Typical practice problems don’t move students up Bloom’s Taxonomy. With this framework, you’ll see kids stop and really think about how to approach multi-digit addition.
Subtraction: 3 Digits Minus 2 Digits (Multiple Solutions)
Typical practice problems don’t move students up Bloom’s Taxonomy. With this framework, you’ll see kids stop and really think about how to approach multi-digit subtraction.
Game: Snakes
In this grid-based strategy game, who will be the last to add to the snake?
Jotto
Who can guess the codeword first?
Math Game: Heaps
Try this a simple (but surprisingly strategic) subtraction game!
Math Curiosity: Ulam Spiral
What if we make a huge spiral of numbers and then highlight only the primes? Well, a bunch of weird patterns show up!
Math Curiosity: A Pattern Packed Triangle
Pascal’s pattern-packed triangle is a potent puzzle for pupils to ponder.
Evens and Odds – Addition and Subtraction
When we’re adding and subtracting, do evens make odds into evens? Do odds make evens odd? Which one has… more power!?
Create Your Own Operation
The commutative and associative properties are a whole lot more interesting when you apply them to a mathematical operation that you created!
What If There Were No Hundreds Place?
Imagine a world with no hundreds place. We’d have to call it ten tens instead. But then, what would we call the thousands place? How would we read 9999? What if we added one more?
SCAMPER: Scaffolding Creativity
Asking students to “think creatively” won’t get you far. They won’t know how to start, they’ll get stuck with simple ideas, or they’ll just go completely wild. SCAMPER is a tool for scaffolding the process of creativity.
Disneyland Parking Structure Math Project
Your students will use estimation strategies to figure out how many parking spots are there in the parking structure at Disneyland? And you bet I reveal the real answer!
Numerator or Denominator: Which has more power in a fraction?
What do you do with students who already get their fraction operations? Give them a contrived project about recipes or pizza slices? Make them solve annoyingly hard practice problems? Please. Here, we get students thinking in a whole new way, pondering which has more power, the numerator or denominator.
Parentheses: How big of a change can they make!?
Two tiny parentheses. One expression. How big of a change can they make? Bigger than you think.
How Many Ways: Fraction Equivalence
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
How Many Ways: Times Equals Minus
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
How Many Ways: Times Equals Times
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
How Many Ways: Order of Operations 1
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
How Many Ways: 2 Digits ÷ 1 Digit = 1 Digit
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
What’s In My Brain: Cute Baby vs Fast Cheetah
Can students spot similes vs metaphors?
Fraction Ordering Tournament
Which set of fractions would be the trickiest to order from least to greatest? Let’s have a tournament!
Game: Order and Chaos
Imagine Tic-Tac-Toe if both players could play as both Xs and Os!
Writing A Story About Fraction Equivalence
When fractions take on a new denominator, it’s as if they’re wearing a disguise – same value, new look. So let’s write a story about fraction equivalence starring a fraction who needs to fit in with a new group.
Bulls and Cows
How quickly can you break the numeric code?
Same Perimeter, Different Area For Rectangles
Can two rectangles have the same perimeter but… different areas!?
Intersecting Angles and Streets
There can never be just one angle.
Exponents – How Low Can They Go?
Using exponent patterns, can students predict what the 0th power will be?
Rounding Numbers (But Not To 10)
What could we possibly do to make rounding more interesting for students who already get it? In this series, students consider how they might round to values other than “the nearest 10.” How, for example, do we round to the nearest 9? 7? 15?
Math Curiosity: Four Squares
Every positive integer can be written as the sum of (at most) four perfect squares!
Math Curiosity: Magic Squares
Imagine a 3×3 square in which every row, column, and diagonal have the same sum. That’s a magic square!
Math Curiosity: The Coloring Problem
No video gets me more email from students! How few colors can you use to color in any map so that no two, neighboring regions are the same color?
Chomp
Chomp away at your opponent in this grid-based strategy game.
Col – A Strategy Game
The first person to run out of regions loses in this strategy game.
Dots and Boxes
Who can make the most boxes from dots in this strategy game?
Why Is Our Calendar So Weird!?
Why are there 12 months? Why don’t weeks fit into months evenly? Why don’t weeks fit into the year evenly? What’s going on with the calendar!
The Angles of a Triangle
Why tell a kid the rules of a triangle when they can discover them!?
Grouping Quadrilaterals In A Hierarchy
Can we classify quadrilaterals like we classify living things?
Lines, Line Segments, Rays, and Infinity!
A lesson about lines, line segments, and rays that avoids dull memorization. Instead, we ponder this delightful question: Which is longer, a ray or a line? Then, kids consider what these different geometric concepts would think about each other.
Deducing the Area of Triangles
Using patterns, students try to deduce where that area formula came from.
What Does it Cost to Fill a Car with Other Liquids
Is gas actually that expensive? What if we filled a car up with… orange juice?
Math Curiosity: Odds & Squares
Why does the sum of the first 5 odds also equal 5 squared?
Fractals: Sierpinski’s Triangle
What if this triangle pattern just kept repeating… forever!?
Fractals: Koch Snowflake
You could keep zooming in on this snowflake forever!
Math Curiosity: Waring’s Conjecture
So, can you write every odd (greater than 3) as the sum of three primes?
Math Curiosity: Primes and Squares
Can any perfect square be written as the sum of two primes?
Math Curiosity: Finding Primes
Prime numbers are unpredictable! How can we possibly find them all? An Ancient Greek mathematician found one way!
Math Curiosity: Twin Primes
What do you call two prime numbers who are very close together?
Fraction Puzzlers: Add and Subtract Fractions To Reach A Number
You only have six digits to form three fractions. Can you combine them to get to 0?
A Visual Guide To Dividing By Fractions
Have you ever wondered what it looks like to divide by a fraction, man?
Exploring Circumference With Famous Circles
Let’s find how the diameter and circumference of famous circles are related.
How to Play Go
Ready to learn a 2,500-year-old Chinese board game? Let’s… Go!
How Many Students Can Fit On The Playground?
So… just how many kids could we cram onto the playground?
Math Curiosity: Palindromic Number Conjecture
Using this one weird trick, it seems that you can turn any number into a palindrome!
The Game of 100
Who can get to 100 first in this simple, but delightful, math game?
Math Curiosity: Collatz Conjecture
The Collatz Conjecture: start with any number and get to 1 using just two rules. It seems to always work…
A Grid-Based Fraction Project
You’ve got 60 spaces on a grid to create an amusement park, a house, a farm, or whatever you’d like. Divide it into seven pieces, order it by size, combine into two halves, and more in this fraction project.