activity – Page 3 – In Pursuit of Great Mathematics Teaching

Mean, Median, and Mode: Sorting Cards

I have a set of cards with statements like these:

Some of the statements are always true, others are never or sometimes true. I give each pair of students a set of these cards and a laminated board (below). The students have to discuss and sort the statements.

Next, I ask students for feedback and I will often lead a whole class discussion highlighting some of the common misconceptions. This activity always leads to good discussion, both between the pairs and as a class. Here are pdf documents: the cards and the board. If you try it, please leave a comment telling me how it goes.

True or False Sorting Cards for Arithmetic Sequences and Series

I have noticed that my students get a bit confused sometimes with arithmetic sequences. They think that the statement above is true: the sixth term in a sequence can be found by doubling the third term. So I made up a set of true/false sorting cards that highlighted some common misconceptions. There are seven statements like the one above that I ask students to sort and then we discuss them as a class.

I made these cards with Tarsia; a pdf is available here.

Teaching Activity for Double and Half Angle Formulae

Here is a classroom activity I used with my IB Maths HL students to practice the double and half angle formulae. It is a set of dominoes that the student has to connect from the Start card to the Finish card by solving problems with the double and half angle formulae. The question on the right (above) needs to be connected to its answer on a another card. The answer on the left fits with a different question. I know that the students have completed the task correctly if all the cards are used in a chain from Start to Finish.

I made this activity with Formulator Tarsia, brilliant free software for teachers. I have used it to make matching cards, dominoes, and hexagon puzzles. It’s designed for maths and it can handle maths notation including fraction, exponents, roots, integration, matrices, and so on. I converted the Tarsia file to a pdf using Cutepdf.