Math by the Mountain

Planning for the first day and first week of school can be incredibly stressful because it sets the tone for the entire year. No pressure, right? 

Students are also getting non-stop information about rules, expectations, classroom procedures, and syllabi, so throwing something in to break that up is a must. 

Here are 5 of my favorite activities for the first week of school, that I have used with my Algebra 1 classes over the years but are perfect for any middle school math classroom:

1. All About Me Page – I LOVE using an “all about me” page on the first day of the school year as their very first assignment. Not only does it help me get to know the students, but it helps them learn how turning in assignments works in my class. Because “about me” assignments are inherently a bit personal, I recommend allowing your students to write “skip” if they don’t feel comfortable answering a question. Usually, I say they can write 3 “skips” on their paper and that has been a perfect balance. Grab my about me page here.
   
   
2. Numbers Around the Room – this activity is the perfect way to add movement into your first days of the year. Print the numbers 0 – 12 on separate pieces of paper and hang the numbers evenly spread out around the room. During the activity, display prompts like “On a scale of 1 – 10, how much do you like video games?” and then students will go stand by that number around the room. I do a series of 12 prompts and it’s the perfect way to break of the class. Grab my done-for-you activity here.
   
   
3. 31derful – This is a card puzzle that promotes perseverance and cooperative learning between students. Students work in groups of 3 and are each given a standard deck of 52 playing cards, although they will only use 25. The goal is to create a 5×5 grid with their 25 cards, where each row and each column has a sum of 31. Numbered cards are worth their value, and Jacks, Queens, and Kings are worth 10, and an Ace is worth 11.  The group can look through the deck and pick out their favorite 25 cards that they believe will strategically allow them to complete the 31derful puzzle. If you have bigger class sizes, finding enough decks of cards and finding enough space to lay out that many 5×5 grids of cards can be challenging, so I have made this a digital activity that students can do through Google Slides. Grab the digital version here. 
   

4. Math spoons – During the first week of school, we need to wake students’ math brains up from their summer break hibernation. Playing a game of math-themed Spoons is a great way to do it without being an overwhelming shock to their system (we don’t want to make them feel like they have zero chance of being successful this year, straight from day 1). This is the perfect activity to start engaging with math in a fun way.
   
   If you’ve never played Spoons before, here’s a quick rundown of how the classic card game is played. In short, a standard deck of 52 cards is normally used, but we’re going to use a math deck instead! You can have as many players as you like, but I recommend 6 – 13 players. You will also need spoons – yes, actual spoons like the ones you eat with (I buy plastic spoons for this activity).
   
   The name of the game is to get 4 of a kind. I like to play this game with simple mental math problems that you want students to remember how to do. You can totally customize what those skills are for your course, but I like to pick reviewing integer addition, integer multiplication, fraction multiplication, and square rooting perfect squares. You can do anything though – think about what basic, prerequisite skills your students will need to be successful in your course!
   
   Here’s what you need to know about making your own mathy set of cards for this Spoons game: 

• First, remember that you want the problems to be very fast mental math problems you want students to refresh on. Try to pick 4 different types of categories of skills (integer addition, square rooting perfect squares, etc.)
• You need to come up with a set of 13 different answers, and then make 4 different mental math problems each that would simplify to each of those 13 different answers. I like to use 0 – 12 as my 13 different answers.
  • Example: -2 + 3, -1x-1, 9/9, and Sqrt (1) could be 4 different cards that all simplify to 1. 
• Before playing the game, you will want to do a super quick review of each of the 4 skill types with your students to make sure they remember how to accurately do each type of problem. 
  
  If you don’t want to make your own math spoons activity, you can grab mine here which includes these 4 skills:
  
  • Negative plus a positive integer
  • Negative times a negative integer
  • Multiplication in the form of n*#/n, and
  • Square roots of perfect squares.
    

5. Emoji Puzzles – Emoji puzzles are the perfect way to get students excited about doing more math than they realize, and they are ALWAYS crowd pleasers. I love to grab screenshots off of the SolveMoji website and grab a series of easy, medium, hard, and expert emoji challenges. I like to use 1-2 emoji puzzles at a time as warm-ups or brain break activities throughout the first week of school and pick progressively more challenging puzzles throughout the first week. 

If you try out any of these first-day or first-week activities in your math class, let me know how it went!

-Audrey