Math Starters!: 5- To 10-Minute Activities That Make Kids Think, Grades 6-12 [Paperback]

Judith A. Muschla (Author), Gary Robert Muschla (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 11 and up | Grade Level: 6 and up

Here is a super collection of over 650 ready-to-use math starters that get kids quickly focused and working on math as soon as they enter your classroom! Perfect for any math curriculum, these high-interest problems spark involvement in the day's lesson, help students build skills, and allow you to handle daily management tasks without wasting valuable instructional time.For easy use, all of the math-starter problems are printed in a big 8-1/4" x 11" lay-flat format for photocopying and organized into two parts: Part I, "Making Math Starters a Part of Your Program" gives you practical suggestions for implementing math starters in your teaching routine, and Part II, "Math Starters" provides six collections of math-starter problems related to six major areas of secondary math, including: Whole Numbers: Theory & Operations; Fractions, Decimals & Percents; Measurement; Geometry; Algebra; and Potpourri.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Here is a super collection of over 650 ready-to-use math starters that get kids quickly focused and working on math as soon as they enter your classroom! Perfect for any math curriculum, these high-interest problems spark involvement in the day's lesson, help students build skills, and allow you to handle daily management tasks without wasting valuable instructional time.

For easy use all of the math-starter problems are printed in a big 8 ?" x 11" lay-flat format for photocopying and organized in two parts:

Part I, "Making Math Starters a Part of Your Program" gives you practical suggestions for implementing math starters in your teaching routine, including tips on evaluation, class management, setting up cooperative groups, and more.

Part II, "MATH Starters" provides six collections of math-starter problems related to six major areas of secondary math. Following is a brief overview of what you'll find for each math areas:

• WHOLE NUMBERS: THEORY & OPERATIONS 86 problems like "Perfect Squares," "Emirps," "Divisibility by 11," and "Symbols" covering types of numbers, basic operations, rules for divisibility, multiple, greatest common factors and other topics
• FRACTIONS, DECIMALS & PERCENTS 122 starters such as "Comparing Fractions & Decimals," "Equivalencies" and "Finding a Number When the Percent of It Is Unknown"
• MEASUREMENT 7% problems using English and metric measurements, time temperature and other measures, including "Obsolete Units" (cubics & spans), "The 24-Hour Clock," "Cords of Wood," "Parsecs and Light Years," and "Computer Memory"
• GEOMETRY 130 starters such as "Types of Angles," "Convex Polygrams," "Generating Pythagorean Triples," and "Identifying Trapezoids and Parallelograms"
• ALGEBRA 128 problems, prealgebra and up, such as "The Number Line," "Adding and Subtracting Integers," "Finding the Slope," and "Finding the GCF of Monomials"
• POTPOURRI 112 math starters on data analysis, probability, fractals, codes, vectors and more, such as "Number Ciphers," "Finding Simple Probability" and "Magic Squares"

Complete answer keys for all math starters are provided in the "Answer Keys" at the end.

Moreover to help you easily select problems to meet the diverse needs of your students, the difficulty level of each starter is denoted by one, two, or three stars for individual or group work. And as a further help, the skills in each of the books's six sections of math starters follow a sequence common to most math curriculum.

About the Author

Gary Robert Muschla has over 23 years' experience as a classroom teacher. He is a member of the Authors Guild and the National Writers Association and currently teaches at Appleby School in Sportswood, NJ. Judith A. Muschla has been a mathematics teacher in South River, NJ, for the past 23 years. She was the recipient of the 1990-91 Governor's Teacher Recognition Program Award in New Jersey. The Muschlas previously co-authored The Math Teacher's Book of Lists (Prentice Hall, 1995), and Hands-on Math Projects with Real-Life Applications (The Center for Applied Research in Education, 1996).

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 11 and up
  
• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (October 28, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0876285663
• ISBN-13: 978-0876285664
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #96,022 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great investment for any math teacher!, May 5, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Math Starters!: 5- To 10-Minute Activities That Make Kids Think, Grades 6-12 (Paperback)

I use activities from this book almost every day. It can be used to reinforce current concepts or to review prior lessons. It covers a wide variety of topics and offers problems that are appropriate for a broad range of abilities (I teach 8th-grade math). It is a great way to engage students from the minute they walk in the door. The problems are great for challenging ALL of your students!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Basic Skills, not so basic activities, June 1, 2007

By 

D. Caine (On the Maryland shores) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Math Starters!: 5- To 10-Minute Activities That Make Kids Think, Grades 6-12 (Paperback)

I really love most of the worksheet pages in this book. This is a book full of reproducible pages. The pages are great reinforcement pages to a middle/high school curriculum, but the worksheets are not dull and boring. They use higher level thinking skills and offer a little bit of interest by including secret messages and game-type worksheets, too. Highly recommend. Great homework pages. Easy to match up the skills with your curriculum since each page focuses on a single topic.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Curriculum Supplement, September 25, 2005

By 

SeaLass (Wakefield, RI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Math Starters!: 5- To 10-Minute Activities That Make Kids Think, Grades 6-12 (Paperback)

II find these math starters very helpful. I have been using them since the beginning of school and they have been a wonderful tool to help my students get back into the routine of school work.