“Under the M… the square root of 12”

On this blog, sometimes I share my thoughts about transforming math education. This is not one of those times.

Here, I’m using my blog as a digital filing cabinet.

One activity that my students enjoyed was MATHO (and its variations FACTO and TRIGO).

Have students select and place answers from the bottom of each column to fill up their MATHO cards. In some versions, I pulled prepared questions from a hat. In other versions, I translated answers to questions on the fly. For example, if I grabbed 2√3, I called out “Under the M… the square root of 12”. After a student shouts “MATHO!” ask potential winners to read aloud their numbers. (Remember to keep track of answers you have called.)

Nothing revolutionary here – just a fun way to review content.

Squares & Square Roots
Exponent Laws
Simplifying Radicals
Rational Exponents
Factoring Trinomials x^2+bx+c
Factoring Special Products
Trig Functions

By the way, if you are looking to read about changing things, please check out Sam Shah’s recent post, The Messiness of Trying Something New.