Math

Math and Novelty: What if we didn’t have 10 numerals?

Looking for some ways to challenge your advanced mathematicians? If you'd like to keep them on the same topic as the rest of your class, consider increasing the complexity of your current unit. If they're in need of more advanced curriculum to keep their creativity flowing, try to bring in novel ways of looking at math.

Goldbach’s Conjecture

Our look at math conjectures continues with Goldbach's Conjecture, which states that all even integers greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two primes. Is this true for all cases? Another authentic, unsolved question.

Fixing my “Think Like A Statistician” Frame

I used a Depth and Complexity Frame like this with my math students. Let’s look at how we could improve this. Some problems: It asks four unrelated questions. I want to build a sequence of questions that climbs Bloom’s Taxonomy. Most of the questions are naturally answered with “yes” or “no” or a list. Questions […]

Constructing Meaningful Math Projects

Here are four key attributes I look for when developing math projects: juicy data, interesting conflict, an expert's lens, and a final product.

Exploring Palindromes in ELA and Math

Palindromes are one of those fun ideas that some gifted kids just latch onto. We'll check out palindromic words, phrases, and even numbers in this article.

High Level Thinking in Math

When differentiating for my most brilliant mathematicians, there are two traps I fell into: Just making it harder. (Use more numbers or more steps.) Turning it into an art project. (Design a bedroom!) On Bloom’s Taxonomy, my math tasks always maxed out at Apply or would leap away to a fluffy creative task. I think […]

Math Project: Box Office Totals

As a teenager, I loved monitoring the weekend's box office results. This kind of data is exciting, oozing with built in conflict. It sets up questions that require math to answer.

The Collatz Conjecture

A "conjecture" is an idea that is believed to be true, but has not yet been proven. They are authentic unanswered questions for students to explore. The Collatz Conjecture uses two simple rules to get from any number to 1. It seems to work for all numbers...

Mathematical Curiosities

Sometimes you encounter that math student who is simply interested in numbers. Here are some famous (and not so famous) sets of numbers that have curious properties.

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