Classroom Jeopardy Games are used by many teachers as review activities that challenge students to demonstrate proficiency in different areas of mathematics in order to win points for the team.   Whether they are done in Power Point or on index cards, students are motivated to master the concepts and skills involved.

These activities were designed to introduce or reinforce important math concepts and skills using seasonal themes. The games capitalize on students' fascination with spiders at Halloween time.

These activities were designed to introduce or reinforce important math concepts and skills using seasonal themes. This is a natural fit for elementary classrooms where teachers and students celebrate the various holidays with literature and art projects. These activities allow teachers to also incorporate math activities that develop and support important mathematical concepts and skills.

Bats are a common theme at Halloween. Use these resources to capitalize on student interest in bats and develop student understanding of common mathematical patterns.

Ideas and activities that use Two of Everything, One Grain of Rice and the King's Chessboard to introduce students to function machines and input/output tables.   Links to appropriate templates are also provided.

Two of Everything by Lily Toy Hong recounts a Chinese folk tale. The farmer finds a magic pot which doubles everything that is put into it. This humorous story is a great introduction to function machines and input/output tables as teachers make the transition to the "doubling pot" and recording information in an input/output table.

Use the math templates below to create spinners for probability experiments. The templates are designed to be placed in sheet protectors. Students can then customize the spinner for the particular experiment or game. Tape a transparent spinner over top the spinner template for student use. This method allows teachers to create many different spinners using templates and the plastic transparent spinners that are commercially available. This is especially effective when students are designing their own games as they can customize one of the templates or design their own on the computer. The use of the transparent spinner is more reliable than the pencil and paper clip method often suggested as a cost-saving strategy.

Students need many concrete experiences with fractions to develop a deep understanding of the three models of fractions: area, linear and set models. Teachers need to address all three models in well-designed instructional activities so that students develop a rich concept of fractions that they can use to make sense of numbers, operations, measurement and probability. The Math Tours include: activities, problem solving, games, writing to learn, templates, math-literature connections, and web links. Each page has a left navigation bar to easily take you through the tour and back to the homepage or the math topics page.

Some students need prompts to help them write mathematical expressions for target numbers. Climb the Ladder is an activity that prompts students to move from all addition or subtraction problems and include many mathematical topics to generate equivalent names.

Students use a hundred board to eliminate numbers after reading each clue. Students must apply their knowledge of even-odd, multiples and place value to successfully eliminate numbers until the solution is revealed.

These logic number puzzles help students develop strong number sense as they work, clue by clue, to identify the digits of the missing number. The mixed-skills clues incorporate even-odd, less than-greater than, operations (sum, difference), multiples of 5 and 10, geometric terms (octagaon, pentagon, hexagon, quadrilateral, trapezoid, parallelogram), money (quarters, nickels) and measurement (cup, pint, quart, gallon). Students must squeeze every bit of knowledge from each clue to eliminate possible digits until they finally identify the missing digits.

These activities introduce students to the use of sampling for advertising purposes. They also generates a discussion about how advertisers use gimmicks to get people to buy more of their product. Even young students will admit that they have been induced to buy fast food meals in order to collect all of the toys.

Game 1: Contig Game: This game challenges and extends the number sense experience students have gained from writing equivalent mathematical expressions for target numbers. Game 2: The 24 Game builds on students' ability to find equivalent names for numbers. Game 3: In Tribulation, students must search the game-board for 3 numbers in a row (vertically, horizontally or diagonally as in a word search) that combine to make the target number. In this game, however, there is a prescribed formula for combining the numbers. Students must multiply the first two numbers then add or subtract the third number to produce the target number.

Once students have developed conceptual understanding of the basic operations they need to develop fluency with the facts. One quick way to include daily practice and motivate students to master these basic facts is through the use of the Who Has? card decks. These decks can be created for virtually any topic and frequent use as both a whole class practice or as a center activity for partners or small groups will provide facts practice in a highly-motivating format.

There are many possibilities for winter math data collection activities. Look for opportunities to have students create tally charts, clothespin graphs, Venn diagrams, bar and line graphs to organize data and analyze the results of the data collection. Build on students' natural fascination with penguins by including these math pattern activities. The Koch Snowflake is an example of an iterative drawing as each successive stage begins with the previous stage. The Koch snowflake begins with an equilateral triangle.