5 Fun Christmas Math Riddles and Brain Teasers for Grades 1-8

Math teachers often struggle to keep their students engaged during the weeks leading up to winter vacation.

This is a time when your students are extremely excited and anxious about celebrating the holidays and keeping their focus is challenging.

But instead of fighting against your students’ enthusiasm, you can channel it into meaningful learning experiences by incorporating fun holiday-themed Christmas math activities into your lesson plans this month.

And to save you some time, today I am sharing 5 Fun Christmas Math Riddles and Brain Teasers for students in grades 1-8 (with answers included)!

These Christmas Math Activities are a great supplement to our super popular 12 Days of Christmas Math Challenges and 10 Free Christmas Math Activities for Your Kids.

All of the math riddles, puzzles, and brain teasers below are from holiday versions of activities from our best-selling 101 Math Riddles, Puzzles, and Kids Ages 10+!

5 Fun Christmas Math Riddles for Kids:

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1.) Christmas Ornaments

Answer: Nick has 9 ornaments in total: 3 blue, 3 green, and 3 red.

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2.) Buddy and Hermey

Answer: When Buddy is 100, Hermey will be 97.

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3.) How Much for Hot Cocoa?

Answer:  Hot Cocoa costs $1.40 and a cookie costs $0.40.

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Are you looking for more super fun Math Riddles, Puzzles, and Brain Teasers to share with your kids?

My best-selling workbook 101 Math Riddles, Puzzles, and Brain Teasers for Kids Ages 10+! is now available as a PDF download. You can get yours today by clicking here.

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4.) Holiday Spending Spree

Answer: Dasher spent $120, Prancer spent $240, and Cupid spent $360

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5.) How Many Squares? 

Answer: There are 14 total squares (15 if you count the square at the center of the bow on the wreath)

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All of today’s math riddles and brain teasers are holiday versions of the puzzles shared in our best-selling workbook: 101 Math Riddles, Puzzles, and Kids Ages 10+!

Here are some samples from the book:

Guaca-Math

The Gummy Bear Pyramid

In Between

Friday the 13th

101 Math Riddles, Puzzles, and Brain Teasers for Kids Ages 10+! is now available as a PDF download. You can get yours today by clicking here.

Click here to get 100 more math riddles, brain teasers, and puzzles for kids!

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Did I miss your favorite math holiday riddle for kids? Share your thoughts, questions, and suggestions in the comments section below!

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By Anthony Persico

Anthony is the content crafter and head educator for YouTube's MashUp Math and an advisor to Amazon Education's 'With Math I Can' Campaign. You can often find me happily developing animated math lessons to share on my YouTube channel . Or spending way too much time at the gym or playing on my phone.

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Teacher Burnout Is Real. Here Are 3 Effective Prevention Strategies

These Effective Strategies Will Help You to Maintain a Healthier Work-Life Balance and Prevent Teacher Burnout

A Post By: Anthony Persico

The demands of being a classroom teacher can be extremely stressful and often lead to burnout. These strategies and helpful reminders can help you achieve work-life balance and learn to manage teaching-related stress in healthy ways.

Edutopia describes teacher burnout as a state of continuous stress that leads to detachment and cynicism, exhaustion (both physical and emotional), and feeling ineffective and unaccomplished. It can also be described as depression caused by the workload involved with being a teacher.

When teachers fail to prioritize a healthy work-life balance, they put themselves at risk of burning out and losing their passion for being an educator. In fact, teacher burnout may be a leading factor in why 44% of new teachers quit the profession within their first five years.

However, there are many effective strategies that teachers can use to establish healthy boundaries between work and personal life, prevent themselves from being overextended and overstressed, and get through an entire school year without burning out.

3 Effective Strategies for Preventing Teacher Burnout

1.) Learn to Say No

Teachers often make more commitments than they can reasonably handle. While your heart is probably in the right place, you place yourself on the fast track to burnout when you say ‘yes’ too often.

In fact, once you establish yourself as someone who never says ‘no’, students, parents and administrators will only ask more of you, as they are skilled at squeezing every drop of energy a teacher has to offer.

But you have the right to say 'no' to unreasonable requests —without feeling guilty. In the long run, your students and your school will be better off having teachers who live healthy and balanced lives (rather than ones who are exhausted and burnt out).

Read More: Why Every Teacher Should Learn to Say 'No'

2.) Make Time for Yourself

Many teachers make the mistake of spending too much of their personal time working on school-related tasks. This imbalance can easily lead to feeling burnt out way before the school year has ended.

Establishing clear and firm boundaries between your work and personal life is a key element to establishing balance. Some ideas for setting boundaries include:

• No checking emails after the school day has ended.

• No grading or lesson planning on Fridays and Saturdays.

• Staying after school for extra help only two days per week.

• No committing to extracurricular activities.

In addition to setting boundaries, be sure to include non-negotiable personal time in your schedule for things like exercise, reading, and spending time with friends and loved ones.

Read More: A Message to New Teachers: Failure, Feedback, and Focus

3.) Practice Mindfulness

The everyday demands of teaching can be stressful and overwhelming. By practicing mindfulness through meditation, you can effectively learn to slow yourself down, maintain perspective, and deal with stress in a healthy way.

Mindfulness—a set of skills that allows one to be calm and focused on the present moment—can be a real game-changer for teachers looking to manage stress and avoid teacher burn out. Even a few minutes of practice each day can make a big difference.

The following infographic from Harvard Graduate School of Education shares more information on how teachers can use mindfulness to increase well-being, and overcome challenges.

Read More: 21 Time-Saving Strategies, Activities, and Ideas All Math Teachers Should Know

Building Mindfulness For Teachers Guide Learn more about early childhood education from Professional Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Did you find this post on preventing teacher burnout helpful?

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Anthony is the lead educator and founder of Mashup Math. He lives in Denver, Colorado and is also a YouTube for Education partner. Follow him on Twitter at @mashupmath.

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What Math Teaching Strategies Work Best? 16 Math Education Experts Share Their Suggestions.

What Math Teaching Strategies Work Best? 16 Math Education Experts Share Their Suggestions.

Math Education Experts Share What Tools and Strategies They Use to Support Students.

A Post By: Anthony Persico

What works in math education is constantly evolving. Math teaching strategies and techniques that were once commonplace in the classroom several years ago are now being replaced with more effective, research-backed methods aimed at making mathematics a more approachable, meaningful and equitable subject.

I recently reached out to 16 math education experts, including Stanford University Math Education Professor Jo Boaler, and asked the following question: What new belief, behavior, teaching habit, or tool has most improved your teaching over the past 12-18 months and why?

The diverse collection of responses below will help you to identify some new strategies to add to your teaching toolbox and ultimately assist you in becoming a more effective math educator who is better equipped to meet the needs of your students. Enjoy!

What math teaching strategies are the experts using?

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Eddie Woo

Eddie is an Education Ambassador for the University of Sydney, the founder of YouTube’s MisterWooTube channel, and the author of Woo’s Wonderful World of Mathematics and It’s a Numberful World. You can follow him on Twitter @misterwootube.

Eddie Says…

I have been exploring the power of open-endedness in mathematics classroom over the last couple of years, and love the way that it has helped me tease out mathematical thinking in my students. It’s so easy for students to fixate on getting the “right answer” when facing a question in mathematics, and I love the way that open problems emphasize the aspects of reasoning and communication. It’s also fantastic to see how easily a task can be reshaped so that it has a low floor and a high ceiling, to ensure that struggling learners can access the activity and highly competent mathematicians can also find rich avenues for exploration and investigation.

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Chris Woods

Chris is a High School Math Teacher, STEM Presenter, and host of the STEM Everyday Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @dailystem.

Chris Says:

In the past few years, I’ve made the change to get kids holding shapes and equations in their hands more often. It usually starts by handing out some combination of paper, scissors, rulers, colored pencils, tape, and glue sticks to my students, nothing fancy. What happens next is I try to help them “see” how a surface area formula works by building a triangular prism or help them “visualize” how a parabola is formed by drawing a series of lines on a grid. And when math is more than just numbers and letters on a worksheet or an answer on a calculator, it is suddenly something beautiful, creative, and worthy of exploration and discovery.

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Kristen Acosta

Kristen is a K-6 Math Coach, Teacher, and Presenter. You can access her math resources at www.kristenacosta.com and follow her on Twitter @kristenmacosta.

Kristen Says:

It’s amusing that number lines have been around forever, but are so underutilized in helping students with making connections to a bigger picture. When I stumbled upon Clothesline Math (used as an open number line), my students’ number sense improved greatly. Clothesline Math has helped my students see the interconnectedness of how math works.

You can learn more about clotheslines math on Kristen’s website.

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Kyle Pearce

Kyle is a K-12 Mathematics Consultant who delivers presentations and workshops, blog contributor at Tap Into Teen Minds, and co-host of the Make Math Moments podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @MathletePearce.

Kyle Says:

Over the past 12-18 months, one of the biggest epiphanies I’ve had is how important it is to actually understand the math. I’m not talking about how to “do it”, but developing the conceptual understanding of the how and why it works, the connections from one idea to another, and how it develops in young children all the way to high school mathematics. Currently, I’ve been building my own understanding of Proportional Reasoning and I’ve built out a full course for members of the Make Math Moments Academy. You can learn more about it here: makemathmoments.com/academy.

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Makeda Brome

Makeda is a math educator and 2020 Teacher of the Year Recipient in Port St. Lucie, Florida. You can follow her on Twitter @thebromenator.

Makeda Says:

Over the last year-and-a-half, I have become more and more aware of social justice education on teaching and how I play an integral role in that. While our classrooms may be more diverse, much of our teaching practices have not changed to support the diversity in our classrooms. Twitter chats and movements like #ClearTheAir, #HipHopEd, and #EduColor have helped me become a better math educator for all of my students and I now support other teachers in doing the same. All of our students deserve equal learning opportunities, I hope the math community commits to engaging in this work!

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Brian Aspinall

Brian is a K-12 math educator, TEDx presenter, and author of Code Breaker: Increase Creativity, Remix Assessment, and Develop a Class of Coder Ninjas!. You can follow him on Twitter @mraspinall.

Brian Says:

For me, two tools have greatly impacted my teaching pedagogy. Both Scratch and Minecraft offer a sandbox environment for students to create content, try something new, immerse themselves in mathematics and be creative. Not only do they support a constructivist approach to learning, students receive immediate feedback from the tools, freeing up teacher time to consolidate with other students.

Brian shares lesson plan examples on his blog at brianaspinall.com and in his books, Code Breaker and Block Breaker.

Learn more: How to use Minecraft: Education Edition in Your Classroom

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Alice Keeler

Alice is a YouCubed Consultant, Speaker, Google Certified Teacher, and author of several books including Teaching Math with Google Apps: 50 G Suite Activities. You can follow her on Twitter @alicekeeler.

Alice Says:

Students who think they struggle in math are all thinkers. I have yet to meet a kid who isn't a thinker. Instead of giving them DOK 1 problems I use OpenMiddle and other interesting problems where step one is... hmmm, I'm not sure, let me think about it. Turns out they are math people.

The other thing I do is tell a story using Google Slides to explain the math problem. Show your feelings, step .1 take a selfie, show how you collaborated, you're required to google something... and explain it.

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Jennifer Chang Wathall

Jennifer is an advocate for Concept-Based Curriculum and author of Concept- Based Mathematics: Teaching for Deep Understanding in Secondary Schools. You can connect with her on Twitter @JenniferWathall and visit her website www.jenniferchangwathall.com for more information.

Jennifer Says:

I enjoyed a glorious 27-year teaching career and something that completely transformed my practice was embedding an inductive teaching approach. The inductive teaching approach creates an environment for students to uncover the beauty and creativity of mathematics for themselves through inquiry based learning.

The inductive teaching approach encourages students to inquire through experimentation, enables connections between different topics to be made, and supports deep conceptual mathematical understanding which gives students the ability to apply and transfer to different contents.

Learn More: What Does Inquiry-Based Learning Look Like in the Math Classroom?

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Berkeley Everett

Berkeley is a K-5 Math Coach, facilitator to UCLA’s Math Project, designer for Math Visuals. You can follow him on Twitter @BerkeleyEverett.

Berkeley Says:

Is it possible for tasks to differentiate themselves while communicating the idea that math is about relationships (not answers)? This year I took my questions to another level with Open Questions from Marian Small. Instead of "12 is 2/3 of ___" she would pose "___ is 2/3 of ___." Suddenly the task is more accessible and more challenging. Plus, it encourages students to focus on ideas and relationships instead of answers. For more, check out Marian Small's great books, including Good Questions (look for the 3rd Edition).

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Lauren Baucom

Lauren is a High School Math Teacher, doctoral student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and national presenter. You can follow her on Twitter @LBmathemagician.

Lauren Says…

Collective learning is a new term that I am fascinated by, and love finding evidence of it in educational spaces. As educators, we often focus on the learning that we hope is occurring in the students who enter our classrooms. As math coaches, we hope to see the confirmation of learning as educators make adjustments to their practice. Both of these are examples of individual learning. There is a powerful type of learning that is harder to visualize, collective learning, or the learning that is happening between a group of people. For example, in a classroom that promotes student discourse, two students may learn different things from a lesson. The conversation that is facilitated between them will multiply the learning that occurs in that room, as each student brings their individual learning and jointly shares with the others. As a teacher, I often forget about asking myself, “What did we learn collectively today?”, not as an offshoot of “I taught it, so they learned it.”, but from the richness that was created from being together.

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Peter Liljedahl

Peter is an Education Professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada and Math Education Consultant. You can follow him on Twitter @pgliljedahl.

Peter Says:

My favorite practice for the last few years is the use of visibly random groups. Although it is something I have been researching and publishing on for many years, it is a practice that still keeps giving me new surprises every year. It emerged as a reaction to my research that was showing that both self-selected and strategically formed groups create a space where the students know what their role will be that day—and for many, that role was not to think. Random groups do not create this. In addition, random groups bypass all our biases of what students are capable of, reduces social barriers, and drives more autonomous learning behavior. More recently, it has also shown that students take random groups as a sign of confidence in them as learners and thinkers.

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Margie Pearse

Margie is a math coach and curriculum head, a contributor to Edutopia, and the author of Teaching Numeracy: 9 Critical Habits to Ignite Mathematical Thinking. You can follow her on Twitter @pearse_margie.

Margie Says:

I was greatly influenced by The Formative 5. I taught in a district that was committed to infusing literacy strategies across content areas, so assessing BDA style in math was something I was very familiar with, but The Formative 5 took the idea of checking for understanding throughout a lesson one step further. I knew there were certain points in each lesson where understanding was critical to moving forward, but I couldn’t put my finger on it until the idea of a Hinge Point was introduced in the book and that was revolutionary to me.

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Sunil Singh

Sunil is a math learning specialist and author of Math Recess: Playful Learning in an Age of Disruption and Pi of Life. You can follow him on Twitter @Mathgarden.

Sunil Says…

As a math educator, we tend to be caught up in the micro details of problem solving and strategies more often than not. While this makes sense, given the analytical nature of mathematics, I have found that some of the more valued human qualities are equally important in students trusting the journey of learning mathematics. For me, the idea of kindness as a virtue, has become a pillar in teaching mathematics. Through kindness we build trust and friendship, which facilitates a learning environment that allows risk, failure, and the acquisition of resilience.

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Denis Sheeran

Dennis is a math education specialist, administrator, and the author of Hacking Mathematics: 10 Problems That Need Solving and Instant Relevance: Using Today's Experiences to Teach Tomorrow's Lessons. You can follow him on Twitter @MathDenisNJ and visit his website www.denissheeran.com for more information.

Denis Says…

I've been an administrator for the past seven years, supervising math teachers and departments in NJ. In fact, it was in the early part of that experience that I was inspired to write Instant Relevance, Using Today's Experiences to Teach Tomorrow's Lessons. One of the biggest shifts that needs to happen in the classroom is less teacher talking and more student discourse. The saying goes, "whoever is doing the talking is doing the learning" and that needs to be a focus in math classrooms. So, I came across a tool that measures the amount of time teachers and students are talking in the classroom by identifying your voice, multiple voices, and volume and then graphs the data for you on demand. It's called TeachFX. They call themselves a Fitbit for teachers that measures student engagement. As a full time math consultant now, I use the tool during professional development sessions and during teacher observations to give objective feedback to teachers after observing their classrooms. You'd be shocked to find out how much talking most teachers really do, when they do it, and how that contrasts what they thought they'd be doing.

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Mark Chubb

Mark is a math teacher, instructional coach, and blog contributor to Building Mathematicians. You can follow him on Twitter @MarkChubb3.

Mark Says…

For years, I have believed the most important thing we can do as educators is to plan for rich learning experiences, so our students could learn through problem solving. After years of being a math coach, I now see that providing rich experiences isn't enough. If we are aiming to make sure we are maximizing learning in our classrooms it takes us as the teachers to be learning about our students as developing mathematical thinkers, and to be continually curious about their understanding. That is, we need to be noticing and wondering about our students regularly. This is the essence of what assessment means. Here are strategies and practical advice to help us notice and wonder about our students: Noticing and Wondering - A Powerful Tool for Assessment.

Learn More: Using Notice-Wonder Activities to Support Math Learning

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Jo Boaler

Jo is a Professor of Math Mathematics Education at Stanford University, founder of YouCubed, and author of Mathematical Mindsets and Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead, and Live Without Barriers. You can follow her on Twitter @joboaler.

Jo Says:

My teaching has been most helped by the knowledge that connected brains are the most powerful and that when we engage students in mathematics through multiple forms of activity - drawing, writing, moving, modeling, building, calculating, and more—they learn most effectively. Mindset messages are very important, but they need to be accompanied by the opening of mathematics teaching, so that students see the potential for growth. When we combine growth messages with open, growth teaching, mathematics becomes a beautiful subject for students. We share many ways to do this on www.youcubed.org and in my book Mathematical Mindsets.

Learn More: 5 Growth Mindset Books Every Math Teacher Should Read

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Of course, the above strategies, suggestions, and ideas for teaching math just scratch the surface of all there is to learn about the art of teaching mathematics effectively. Subscribe to our mailing list here to get more free daily resources, lesson plans, and insights for K-12 math teachers in your inbox every week.

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Anthony is the lead educator and founder of Mashup Math. He lives in Denver, Colorado and is also a YouTube for Education partner. Follow him on Twitter at @mashupmath.

Why Is Math Important? Here's Your Simple Answer

Why is Math Important?

How to explain the importance of mathematics to your students.

A Post By: QUORA CONTRIBUTOR

Teachers sometimes struggle to answer the question, Why is Math Important? The truth is that mathematics is intertwined into every element of our lives in both direct and indirect ways. By helping your students to understand the importance of mathematics and its connections to the real world, you can teach them to value their math skills as necessary life skills and not just rules and procedures needed to pass an exam.

Helping students understand why math is important can be challenging.

Photo by NeONBRAND on unsplash.com

This question originally appeared on Quora.

Answer by Hans-Edward Hoene, Computer Engineer:

“Everything in the world can be presented in terms of math. Unless you plan on having a career that requires no intellect (which is okay, it’s your life), you can bet your butt that math will play a prominent role in solving problems. Math is the language of nature.”

“ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING IS MATH!!! The circuit topography which runs your computers and phones, the electromagnetic waves (represented as trigonometric equations) which transport data between telecommunications devices (otherwise known as making a call, text, web search, etc.), etc. The thing is that you can’t really understand how something is used unless you understand what is being used.”

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Answer by Paul Graig Ellis

Mathematics is important for several reasons, including:

“Maths has provided humanity and especially those who’ve created/discovered it, with a scheme of structured reasoning, causing us to evolve/learn how to reason, more deeply than using natural language alone”

“Maths has wide-ranging applications, especially in engineering, science and finance, enabling humanity to escape the limitations of inherently ambiguous natural language, allowing the establishment of more reliable knowledge and the accelerating development of the modern world. I should add the role of statistics in allowing knowledge to be obtained in the complex areas of e.g. psychology, sociology and politics.”

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Answer by Arlen Agiliga

Mathematics is important because…

“You need to be able to understand the fundamental, basic concepts of math to be able to survive in the world independently. If you didn’t know how to count, add, subtract, multiply, and divide, think of the number of things you wouldn’t be able to do. This is why math is so important. It’s a form of communication that people use in so many different ways every day. Without it, the world would be a mess.”

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Answer by Shubham Jain, Civil Engineer:

Math skills are life skills. Here’s why:

• Basic math skills help you to solve general math problems in your life, including simple addition and subtraction to managing your finances.

• If you only master one skill in your life, math should be it. Otherwise, you will spend your life being vulnerable to being cheated, robbed or abused. You simply cannot survive without mathematics.

• Practicing and learning mathematics develops your ability to think critically and to reason. It sharpens your mind and applies to all aspects of your day-to-day life.

• Students often perceive mathematics as boring, overly abstract, uncreative, and extremely difficult to understand, which is why many of them develop math phobias as adults. However, the idea of having or not having a math brain is completely untrue. Everyone is capable of understanding mathematics at a high level.

• Mathematics can be applied to a variety of career fields including chemistry, programming, technology, accounting, biology, and physics.

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21 Time-Saving Strategies, Activities, and Ideas All Math Teachers Should Know

21 Time-Saving Strategies, Activities, and Ideas All Math Teachers Should Know

A Post By: Anthony Persico

Some have been around for a while others have only emerged in recent years – but all have been selected from our archives for math teachers of all grade levels, including first year math teachers. Enjoy!

Useful Resources and Strategies

Photo by Wavebreakmedia/iStock / Getty Images

1. Free Math Worksheets — Topic-specific math worksheets are an essential tool for giving your students opportunities to practice and apply what they are learning in class. And while I do not recommend using worksheets as a primary teaching tool, they can be used effectively to supplement instruction and give students the extra practice that they need. Just be sure not to include time restrictions on completing worksheets or other math activities, as this practice can be damaging to students.

2. Puzzles, Riddles, and Brain Teasers — This collection of math puzzles and brain teasers (with answers) is a great ice-breaker activity (I share these with my students on the first day of school) or to use whenever you want your students to engage in creative and outside-of-the-box thinking. The activity comes as a printable PDF worksheet that is easy to share with your students.

3. The 10 Best Math Movies — Whether you want to give your students a break from testing, supplement your instruction, or share some well-earned Friday fun time, showing a math-themed movie in class can be an educational and enjoyable experience. This list shares the ten best school appropriate math movies. I always keep a copy of one or two of them in my desk drawer for a rainy day.

4. An Awesome Way to Teach Kids Fractions — Math teachers of all levels know that many students fail to gain a deep understanding of fractions and decimals. Creating fraction kits is an effective strategy for getting students to explore the idea of equivalent fractions and acquire a conceptual grasp of the topic, which is critical for being successful at higher levels of math. Once students master this topic, they are better equipped to perform more complex tasks like converting a decimal into a fraction.

5. Celebrate Pi Day — I’m always surprised by how many math teachers fail to celebrate Pi Day with their students, since March 14th is the only widely recognized mathematical holiday on the calendar. This collection of Pi Day resources includes a printable infographic and 5-minute Pi Day Fun Facts video that can be shared with students of all grade levels.

6. Inject Pop Culture Into Your Lesson Plans —You can easily boost student engagement by bringing elements of pop culture into your math activities. You can use my popular math activities involving The Avengers, Star Wars, and Nintendo’s Super Mario to channel student interest in movies and video games into meaningful learning experiences.

Boosting Student Engagement

7. Step Up Your Warm Up Activities — I’m a firm believer that the first five minutes of any math lesson are the most important. If you don’t engage and excite your students within the first few minutes, then you will be fighting an uphill battle for the remainder of the lesson. This collection of activities will help you to open your lessons with strong hooks that will keep your students on their toes and excited for whatever comes next. And it includes one of my favorite activities, Two Truths and One Lie, where students are presented with three mathematical statements (only two of which are true) and they have to identify which statement is a lie and justify why their choice is correct.

8. Use More Hands-On Activities — Who said that learning math is a spectator sport? I’m a huge fan of giving my students opportunities to explore mathematical concepts via hands-on activities. Why? Because hands-on activities are a highly effective strategy for developing a strong conceptual understanding of a math topic. Some ideas include using Cheez-Its to explore area and perimeter, using Starburst candies to explore probability, and building fraction kits to explore equivalent fractions.

9. How to Get Your Students Writing About Math — More and more math teachers are incorporating more writing activities into their lesson plans—a trend that is being driven by the use of daily math journals and highly engaging think-notice-wonder writing prompts which help students to organize their thinking, apply key vocabulary, and communicate mathematically.

10. Which One Doesn’t Belong? — If you are looking to make your math warm-ups more visual and thought-provoking, then starting your lessons with Which One Doesn’t Belong? (WODB) activities is a great strategy for instantly sparking creative and critical student thinking that will last for the entire lesson. If you haven’t tried WODB activities yet, give them a try and watch your student engagement skyrocket!

11. Take Advantage of Holidays — I always make a point to steer my students’ enthusiasm for major holidays into meaningful learning experiences by incorporating math in some way. Whether you are building an entire lesson (like this math history lesson on Famous African American Mathematicians during Black History Month) or are just looking for a fun warm-up up or cool down activity to celebrate Christmas, Halloween, or Valentine’s Day, injecting some holiday spirit into your math lessons is always a good idea.

Teacher Well-Being

12. Support a Growth Mindset in Your Classroom — Learning math with a growth mindset— the attitude that learning is a process where mistakes are celebrated as opportunities to grow—can change the way our students feel about the subject. With a growth mindset, I can’t becomes I can’t...yet, which blazes the trail to I can! You can support this mindset for learning in your classroom by sharing the right messages (like these inspiring growth mindset quotes), hanging a growth mindset poster in your classroom, and learning more about the supporting research.

13. Does Your Classroom Have the Essentials? — You know that, when it comes to learning, the environment plays a huge role. What does it take to make your classroom a warm and engaging learning environment? I like to start with organization (where my classroom teacher desk is always organized and packed with the essentials). Then I focus on decorating my classroom with colorful math posters and inspiring math quotes to create a supportive learning environment that is easy to set up and break down at the end of the year.

14. 21 Back to School Tips Every Teacher Needs — This collection of back-to-school tips will help you to reflect upon the previous school year to develop your weaknesses and build upon your strengths, make the most of your summer vacation, learn valuable lessons—like how to say ‘no’ more often—and how to use Twitter to engage in world class professional development from the comfort of your home.

15. Have a Plan for the End of the School Year — Savvy math teachers know that having a solid plan in place for getting through the final weeks of the school year is the key to preventing burnout and promoting personal well-being. I rely on using student-centered math projects at the end of the school year to keep my students engaged. This saved energy can be applied to packing up your classroom the right way, and entering your summer vacation feeling great.

16. Math Teacher Humor — It’s always a good idea to plan many opportunities to laugh during the school year. You can incorporate some math humor in your classroom by sharing funny math jokes and puns for kids, and you can lighten the mood in the teachers’ lounge or at your next faculty meeting by sharing some hysterical memes that every math teacher can relate to.

Professional Development

17. Attend a Conference — Every math teacher should attend a conference at least once every few years. Conferences are a great place to network with fellow educators, learn new things (most conferences give you the flexibility to pursue topics that you are most interested in), discover emerging trends in math education, collect some awesome goodies and gifts, and make new friends.

18. Use Twitter for Personalized PD — Twitter has become a place where teachers go to network, swap ideas, and interact with math education gurus like Jo Boaler. This guide to using Twitter for personalized professional development will walk you through setting up an account, using hashtags, connecting with influencers, and building your personal learning network.

19. Embrace More Technology — This post shares simple and approachable ways to make your lessons more tech-friendly, including how to implement a bring your own device policy, setting up an online classroom, flipping you instruction using video lessons, and how to use popular software like Minecraft for Education.

20. Utilize YouTube — YouTube is a treasure trove of high quality and 100% free K-12 math video lessons that you can use to supplement your instruction both inside and outside of the classroom. These video lessons are especially helpful for students who need to brush up on topics while away from the classroom and they are a great resource for supporting your visual learners.

21. Make Real World Connections — I often tell my students that math is everywhere in an effort to blur the lines between the classroom walls and the real world. This collection of interesting real-world applications of mathematics will allow you to empower your students with the knowledge of the amazing places their math skills can take them.

Of course the above 21 Time-Saving Strategies, Activities, and Ideas for math teachers just scratch the surface of all there is to learn about the art of teaching mathematics effectively. Subscribe to our mailing list here to get more free daily resources, lessons, and tips in your inbox every week.

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Anthony is the lead educator and founder of Mashup Math. He lives in Denver, Colorado and is also a YouTube for Education partner. Follow him on Twitter at @mashupmath.

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