Blog

Have dice in your house and want to try out a fun math game? Stephanie Fitzpatrick models a fun dice trick you can use to sharpen your math skills and impress your friends and family! In the video below, I show you a fun and clever dice trick that is perfect for young learners. It…

Stephanie Elizondo shows you how to use M&M’s to explore fractions in this week’s featured math focus problem! What could be better than combining a math focus problem with a delicious treat? I picked up a handful of M&M’s One-third of them were red. What might a drawing of the M&M’s look like? Check out…

LaToya Major takes us with her on a notice/wonder walk around her neighborhood to observe symmetry in the world around us. One of the activities we can do with few materials and our imagination is taking a walk outside and noticing the math in the world around us. I recently took a walk and focused…

Chrissy Ramsey and her son Colton share how they counted objects on their walk and represented the data using tally marks in a tally chart. Many people in communities across the country are posting objects in their windows so those out doing socially distanced walks can find the objects on scavenger hunts. My son Colton…

I’d like to talk to you about this paradigm that’s shifted in education. In the United States, we have found ourselves in a situation where the majority of students are being homeschooled. Caregivers, parents, grandparents, family members are taking care of and homeschooling kids, and for the most part, this was probably never anything you expected…

In this special episode of Method to the Mathness, hosts Nikki LaLonde and Jennifer Lenhardt discuss the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on our communities and our students with ICLE Senior Fellow Dr. Tyrone Howard. Dr. Howard shares his perspective on the connective role that teachers and schools play within communities, particularly amidst the new…

Many students will be home these next several weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. What might happen if children spend a portion of their time doing real-world mathematics? At a minimum, they could discover that mathematics is interesting and useful. Perhaps they will decide that they are indeed math people. Here are some investigations to…

Also known as March 14th, Pi Day is when mathematicians and math lovers around the world celebrate pi, often approximated to 3.14, which is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. The circle is often the first shape many learn in childhood, and can be observed in nature in pinecones, apples, oranges, the cornea…

Each year our middle school celebrates the circle and its mathematical relationships on “Pi Day,” March 14, using the date of 3/14 to honor the 3.14 approximation of pi. A local bakery donates pies and, in every math class, students measure round things and consume their pieces of pie. Amidst the Pi Day activities, students…

When I began teaching almost 20 years ago, one of the veteran teachers made a quick visit to the classroom that we shared to pick up materials. She was very impressed with my students’ behavior and remarked, “Wow, they are so quiet!” The veteran teacher’s comment was kind of funny to me because my students…