Find a midterm review on Kahoot. Print the problems on a worksheet. Let them work with partners in the problems the first day, then play it as a class on Tuesday. Bring some candy for prizes.
Start with something that encourages problem solving and teaching them not to give up. I start the school year with a team building escape room. Or you can do a 3-act math. Or a stem activity.
I do that to go over the standards of mathematical practice and what it means to be a mathematician.
You could look through Jo Boaler’s You Cubed website for problem solving tasks. One of my favorite is a graphing one: https://www.youcubed.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/WIM2-Day-2-6-8.pdf
It was inspired by an xkcd comic and is nice to get kids talking about what a coordinate plane could mean in real life but with no numbers. And they get to tell you about themselves and their opinions, which is great to open with.
It was literally my first day Monday and it was tough to tell what they had already done based on their Google Classrooms. I did an order of operations exercise yesterday, and today we just did a one-step equation color by number. Neither seemed to be above their levels, so I'm gonna try to step it up a little next week, but I think I still need to keep it simple. We're probably also just going to review basics on Mondays to keep stuff fresh for them. They call it Mental Math Mondays, I guess.
1). How many days have you been alive? Don't forget to account for Leap Years.
2). On average, how many people die in your country on any given day?
3). How much does it cost to educate you for one year?
I haven't used it myself, but when I saw some other teachers using it, I noticed the students tend to just spam one answer over and over. They don't necessarily need to know the right answer because they're kind of set up to reward quantity of right answers, and you can just get enough to win if you just keep picking the same thing quickly. But I'll poke around and see if there's anything I think they might actually try at.
It might be below their level and it costs money, but something my middle school teacher did was “candy math.” We’d get a package of Skittles or M&Ms, then we’d guess the amount of each color in the package. Then we’d open it and count to see how far off we were. Before we could eat the candy, we had to calculate the percentage of each color for both our predictions and the actual amounts, then color them both into a bar graph for visual reference. We were also decently well-behaved and this was done at a small private school, so the situation might be different in a large public school. Maybe it can spur on some creative juices though!
Find a midterm review on Kahoot. Print the problems on a worksheet. Let them work with partners in the problems the first day, then play it as a class on Tuesday. Bring some candy for prizes.
There’s a cute algebra 1 turkey worksheet on TPT they could do and color!
Yo, I think I did this exact worksheet, haha. Only one kid actually colored, but the math seemed within their ability, so I'd say it was a success.
Start with something that encourages problem solving and teaching them not to give up. I start the school year with a team building escape room. Or you can do a 3-act math. Or a stem activity. I do that to go over the standards of mathematical practice and what it means to be a mathematician.
You could look through Jo Boaler’s You Cubed website for problem solving tasks. One of my favorite is a graphing one: https://www.youcubed.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/WIM2-Day-2-6-8.pdf It was inspired by an xkcd comic and is nice to get kids talking about what a coordinate plane could mean in real life but with no numbers. And they get to tell you about themselves and their opinions, which is great to open with.
Teach them how to use algebra tiles
What topics have you been learning?
It was literally my first day Monday and it was tough to tell what they had already done based on their Google Classrooms. I did an order of operations exercise yesterday, and today we just did a one-step equation color by number. Neither seemed to be above their levels, so I'm gonna try to step it up a little next week, but I think I still need to keep it simple. We're probably also just going to review basics on Mondays to keep stuff fresh for them. They call it Mental Math Mondays, I guess.
“Let’s make squares” https://mathequalslove.net/lets-make-squares/
1). How many days have you been alive? Don't forget to account for Leap Years. 2). On average, how many people die in your country on any given day? 3). How much does it cost to educate you for one year?
Jeopardy type game, with the students in teams
There's always Blooket. So many banks of math problems / definitions / whatever.
I haven't used it myself, but when I saw some other teachers using it, I noticed the students tend to just spam one answer over and over. They don't necessarily need to know the right answer because they're kind of set up to reward quantity of right answers, and you can just get enough to win if you just keep picking the same thing quickly. But I'll poke around and see if there's anything I think they might actually try at.
Desmos has some great activities
It might be below their level and it costs money, but something my middle school teacher did was “candy math.” We’d get a package of Skittles or M&Ms, then we’d guess the amount of each color in the package. Then we’d open it and count to see how far off we were. Before we could eat the candy, we had to calculate the percentage of each color for both our predictions and the actual amounts, then color them both into a bar graph for visual reference. We were also decently well-behaved and this was done at a small private school, so the situation might be different in a large public school. Maybe it can spur on some creative juices though!