Mathsational

*singing* One of these things is not like the others.  One of these things just doesn't belong... Which One Doesn't Belong is a fairly new resources.  As usual, I stumbled upon this jem while catching up on tweets one day.  I use these as warm-ups about once per week in my 9-12 classroom.  I am not concerned that the topic we are studying is represented in the set, but rather that students think of multiple solutions.  That is my favorite part of using these sets.  I encourage students to come up with a reason why any of the 4 pictures could be the one that doesn't belong. I love that there is often an obvious solution so all students can find success but there are multiple answers for students who are ready to think more deeply.  I have not tried the incomplete sets yet, but I think those would be awesome for higher order thinking skills as would making up your own WODB set.

AOD is another site that I love. These usually take the entire period to get through so they may not be just a warm-up. I could certainly see starting the activity at the beginning of a unit and then asking students to draw a conclusion. When they indicate that they don't know how to justify their position, it creates a need for the unit that you are starting. Then you can come back to this activity again at the end of the unit and do the math to support or dispute their original claim. Tim McCaffrey, the creator of this site has asked engaging questions that require 3-acts to reach their conclusion.  The 3-acts typically involve posing a problem, giving more information, and finding a solution.  Other tweeps have their own 3-act databases that are awesome too.  I'll write about those in a later post.  For now, enjoy these.  This is a good place to get started with 3-act math because it is not too overwhelming.  

My Second MTBoS favorite is Would You Rather .  This is another resource that I like to use to start my 9-12 classes.  Some of the questions are quick enough to use as a warm-up while others are long enough that you could spend an entire class period researching, calculating, and arguing.  I like these activities because they are interesting to students and require a low level of math knowledge to get started.  Of course, students can get very in depth with some of their answers.  I especially like to use these at the beginning of a unit before students have the skill to answer the questions.  An example of this might be using this probability task before learning about compound probability.  In this case the students might try to solve the problem with the brute force method, creating a sample space.  Then I can share with them the short cut and they would have a better appreciation for it.  The most important thing about these tasks i...