Instructions

Fill in the missing numbers in the provided “crossword” puzzle so that each entry is an arithmetic sequence (a sequence formed by adding or subtracting the same value repeatedly).

Suitable Grade Levels

My AP Precalculus students have been struggling to remember the formulas for working with arithmetic sequences, so I decided to create this new arithmetic sequence puzzle to use as a review activity as we move closer to the AP exam in May.

This puzzle could definitely be used by a wide variety of students. This puzzle is accessible to any students who are familiar with working with positive and negative integers. You may need to introduce them to the concept of an arithmetic sequence (a sequence where the differences between every two consecutive terms is the same).

I would recommend this puzzle for 7th grade and up.

What is an Add Em Up Activity?

In an Add Em Up Activity, students are provided with four problems to solve. These four problems are laid out in a 2 x 2 grid with a circle at the center.

Students must work all four problems and find the sum of their four answers. We call this the “Add Em Up” step.

There are two different approaches for this activity. You can provide students with the template that tells them the sum that their answers should add up to. This makes the activity self-checking.

Or, you can give students the template with a blank circle in the center. Students must then find the sum of their four answers, write it in the circle, and bring the activity to you to verify the correctness of their sum.

Two Step Equations Activity

For the Two Step Equations Add Em Up Activity, students are given four 2-step equations to solve. If students solve the four equation problems correctly, the sum of their four answers should be -17.

This activity is meant to only take 5-10 minutes of class. It would make a great exit ticket activity or a “let’s see what you remember from yesterday” opening activity.

You could also assign it as a short homework assignment.

More Add Em Up Activities

I have created Add Em Up activities for other math topics as well that you might be interested in checking out like my angles in polygons activity, my non-standard operations activity or my binomial expansion activity.

About the Big 10 Worksheet Structure

A few years ago, I started teaching AP Calculus AB. It has been a wonderful learning opportunity for both my students and me. I am continually blown away by the number of free activities and resources that are shared by members of the AP Calculus community.

I realized that several of the practice activities that were shared in the AP Calculus Teachers Facebook group could be modified for use in math courses of all levels. One of
these commonly used activities for teaching AP Calculus is called “Big 10.”

The majority of the Big 10 activities I have used in calculus have been written by Bryan Passwater. Vicki Carter has also been creating some Big 10 Activities for AP Precalculus. There is also a collection of AP Calculus Big 10 Activities that can be downloaded on TPT from CR Calculus.

A Big 10 worksheet has 10 questions. At the beginning of the worksheet, there is a box containing either the numbers 0-9 or 1-10.

Students cross out a number in the box after solving each problem. If done correctly, students will have all 10 numbers crossed off without any repeats.

I like these activities because they are self-checking, and they aren’t too tricky to put together yourself if you are needing a review activity for a certain topic. You simply need to come up with 10 questions with answers of either 0-9 or 1-10.

Worksheet Instructions

Complete each problem. Cross off the answer in the box below.

If done correctly, you will have all 10 numbers crossed off with no repeats.

This worksheet features 10 different quadratic equations for students to solve. Each of these quadratics can be solved by factoring. The worksheet does not specify that students MUST solve the quadratic equations by factoring.

Students could use the quadratic formula to solve these equations if they preferred to. For me, however, I would most likely include this worksheet in my solving quadratic equations by factoring section.

These problems are intended for students at an Algebra 2 level or above. I have not personally used this activity with students yet. I created it to be featured in the Oklahoma Council of Teachers of Mathematics quarterly newsletter, and I decided I wanted to share it with you as well!

Class of 2024 SVG File

This Class of 2024 SVG file features an expression involving e and natural logarithms which evaluates to 2024. I overlaid a mathematical design to the graduation cap, and I really like how it ended up turning out.

I created the design in Canva and used Inkscape to convert my JPG file to a SVG file for cutting.

I have uploaded both the JPG file and SVG file at the end of this blog post for you to download and use to create your own creations.

Class of 2025 – 2030 SVG Files

Have students in your class that aren’t graduating yet? Here are some designs for upcoming graduating classes. This way everyone can get in on the sticker fun!

Cutting Stickers with a Cricut Machine

Here’s a quick overview of the process of making your own stickers with a cricut machine. If you have never used the print and cut feature to make your own stickers, I highly suggest watching a youtube tutorial video on how to create your own stickers BEFORE attempting this!

Supplies for DIY Stickers

• Cricut Cutting Machine with Print and Cut Capabilities – I have a Cricut Maker 3, but you could also use a Cricut Explore Air 2 or Cricut Explore 3. (The Cricut Joy will NOT work for cutting stickers.)
• Standard Grip Mat
• Sticker Paper
• Laminating Pouches

This is the third batch of stickers that I have cut using my Cricut Maker 3 which I was able to write a grant for.

Overview of Cutting and Laminating Your Own Stickers

Upload your SVG file to Cricut Design Space. Size the design appropriately, and choose “Print and Cut.”

Select the image and add an offset. Adjust the offset so that there are now weird holes or gaps in the middle of the sticker.

Drag the offset away from the image. Change it from “Print and Cut” to basic cut. Change the color to white.

Reassemble the sticker and the offset. Flatten the two layers together.

Choose “Make.” Decide how many stickers you would like to print.

I did my stickers so they were roughly 2.75″ across. Cricut Design Space told me I could print 6 stickers to a page, but I was able to print 8 per page with some adjustments and moving things around.

Use the print and cut feature to print two sheets of stickers on sticker paper. (I always change the print resolution to high quality graphics when I do this.)

Place these two sticker sheets back-to-back in a laminating pouch. After the sticker sheets are laminated, trim the lamination off of the edges and pull the two sticker sheets back apart.

Attach the laminated sticker sheet to your standard grip mat. Choose the acetate cut setting with “more pressure” to create die-cut stickers.

You will need to peel off the page surrounding the stickers before beginning to peel the stickers off of the Cricut mat.

I just love how these turned out!

Need 10 or Less Stickers?

If you need 10 or less of these stickers for your students, Sticker Mule has a special offer where you can order 10 stickers for $1.00 with free shipping. I have used this offer with them before, and I was super pleased with their service!

The JPG file for the sticker image is also included in the ZIP folder above with the SVG file. You will need to upload this JPG file to be able to order stickers online.

General Algebra Jokes

• Why was the math book sad? It had a lot of problems. 
• What is an algebra teacher’s favorite animal? A hippopotenuse. (hypotenuse)
• What did one algebra book say to the other? Don’t bother me! I’ve got my own problems.
• What do you call friends who love math? Alge-bros
• What is a bird’s favorite type of math? Owl-gebra
• Why does algebra make you a better dancer? Because you can use the algo-rhythm!
• Do you know who invented algebra? An x-pert.
• What state has the most algebra teachers? Math-achusetts
• Why do cheapskates make good algebra teachers? Because they make every penny count.
• What does a hungry algebra teacher like to eat? A square meal
• What is an algebra teacher’s favorite sandwich? Slope-y Joe
• Why can you never trust an algebra teacher holding graph paper? They must be plotting something!
• Did you hear that old algebra teachers never die? They just lose some of their functions.
• Why do algebra teachers feel superior to geometry teachers? Because they think that geometry teachers are too symbol-minded!
• What is a math teacher’s favorite season? Sum-mer. 
• What is a butterfly’s favorite subject at school? Mothematics.

Combining Like Terms Jokes

• What is 2n plus 2n? I don’t know. It sounds 4n to me.

Logarithm Jokes

• Why do mathematicians like parks? Because of all the natural logs.
• What do organic mathematicians throw into their fireplaces? Natural logs.

Polynomial Jokes

• Why can’t you trust a polynomial to stay the same? They have too many variables.

Quadratics Jokes

• How does a ghost solve a quadratic equation? By Completing the Scare
• What do baby parabolas drink? Quadratic formula

Radical Jokes

• Why do plants hate math? It gives them square roots.

Conic Section Jokes

• Why didn’t the hyperbola feel sick? It was asymptote-matic.

Parallel and Perpendicular Line Jokes

• What do you call more than one L? Parallel
• Why is it sad that parallel lines have so much in common? Because they’ll never meet.
• What do parallel lines and vegetarians have in common? They never meat.

Exponent Jokes

• Why won’t Goldilocks drink a glass of water with 8 pieces of ice in it? It’s too cubed.
• In the expression x³, what do you call 3? An x-ponent
• Why did seven eat nine? Because you’re supposed to eat 3 squared meals a day!

Pi Day Jokes

• Why should you never start a conversation with pi? It’ll just go on forever.
• Why did Pi get its driver’s license revoked? Because it didn’t know when to stop.
• What’s the official animal of Pi day? The Pi-thon!
• What do you get when you take the sun and divide its circumference by its diameter? Pi in the sky
• Why isn’t pi on Twitter? Because 280 characters isn’t enough to express itself.
• What was Isaac Newton’s favorite dessert? Apple pi.
• What do you call a mathematician who doubles as a private investigator? Magnum Pi.
• What’s the math teacher’s favorite dessert? Pi.
• How many bakers does it take to bake a pi? 3.14.
• Why shouldn’t you eat too much pi? You’ll end up with a large circumference.
• What do you get when a bunch of sheep hang out in a circle? Shepherd’s pi.
• What did pi say in a fight with its brother? You’re being irrational.
• What’s the best way to visualize infinity? Using a pi chart.
• What did the mathematicians order at the restaurant on March 14th? Chicken pot pi.
• What do mathematicians and the Air Force have in common? They both use pi-lots.
• What’s the best way to serve pi? A la mode. Anything else is mean.

Setting up the Silent Board Game

When I entered the session that the room was in, one of the first things I noticed was a laminated strip of paper taped to the wall.

You could also use technology to project an input/output table on the screen for students to see.

CPM offers a PDF file with several examples of silent board game tables that can be downloaded.

Running the Activity

This is truly meant to be a silent board game. This kind of surprised me during the workshop even though the word silent is in the title of the activity.

In the workshop I attended, the facilitator would hold up her dry erase marker in the air until someone raised their hand.

She would hand them the dry erase marker, and they would walk to the board and silently fill in an output value.

If the output value was correct, there was silence.

If the output value was incorrect, there was still silence, but the facilitator would walk to the board and erase the incorrect value.

This continued until the board was filled.  Then, we moved on and silently filled in the rule for the function and the functions’ growth rate.

Adapting the Activity

One participant in the session suggested a tweak to this activity: have a graph where students plot each point after adding it to the table.  This could help students see if the function was linear, exponential, etc.

I found a tweet from Bowie Middle School where they showed a coordinate plane next to their silent board game table.

More Silent Board Game Resources

• Blog Post on Silent Board Games from Shelley Carranza
• Suggestions for Carrying out a Silent Board Game Activity from UCLA
• Excel Versions of Silent Board Game from CPM

What math courses is this activity suitable for?

I created this square matching puzzle to give my AP Calculus AB students some much-needed practice converting between expressions written in radical or rational form and expressions written as rational exponents.

While this is considered an Algebra 2 topic in Oklahoma where I teach, the majority of my calculus students have forgotten that the square root of x can be rewritten as x to the 1/2 power. And don’t even get me started on their knowledge of negative exponents which is an 8th grade standard here.

So, I have found that in order for my calculus students to be able to proficiently apply the power rule when taking derivatives of expressions, I have to spend almost an entire class period doing some focused review on this topic.

Even though I created this for my AP Calculus students, it would also be suitable for classrooms such as Algebra 2 or Precalculus where students are learning about converting between radical form and rational exponent form for the first time.

How does the activity work?

In this rational exponents activity, students are given a set of sixteen square cards which feature various algebraic expressions. This is commonly known as a Tarsia puzzle or a square matching puzzle.

Students will grab one of the cards which will feature between two and four expressions on it. They will choose an expression and use their knowledge of exponents, fractions, and radicals to find an equivalent way to write the expression.

This equivalent form will be located on one of the other cards. These two cards may now be placed on the table next to one another.

When all of the expressions are converted and matched correctly, the sixteen pieces will form a 4 x 4 square. My students like to grab individual dry erase boards to work out the problems on while solving the tarsia puzzle.

Printing and Prepping the Puzzle

These puzzle pieces can easily be printed on either letter sized or A4 paper.

The puzzle can be printed with three different sizes of cards. The larger cards are great for students working in groups. The smaller cards are for you if you have students working individually or if you are looking to save paper!

I recommend printing each copy of the puzzle off on a different color of paper and running it through a laminator for extra durability if you plan to use the puzzles with multiple groups of students or save them to use year after year.

The different colors of paper allow you to figure out which set a card belongs to when one of the pieces inadvertently shows up on the floor of your classroom a few days later.

If you don’t plan on reusing the sets of cards, you could have students glue their completed square on a sheet of paper to turn in.

What are Literal Equations?

The phrase “literal equations” refers to equations which involve multiple variables. When we talk about solving literal equations, we are referring to solving the equation for one variable in terms of the other variables.

Literal equations are used in a variety of scientific and mathematical contexts.

Literal Equations in Other Countries

The phrase “solving literal equations” is very common in the United States, but the phrase is rarely found in countries outside the US.

In the UK, these types of problems are generally referred to as “Rearranging Formulae.” My husband is from Australia, and he often refers to these types of problems as “Changing the subject.”

Activities for Introducing Literal Equations

Try these activities for introducing students to the concept of working with literal equations.

Introducing Literal Equations with Number Tricks

Visual Approach to Rearranging Formulas

Methods of Solving Literal Equations

I hope to build out this section in the near future. If your students are struggling with manipulating literal equations, I suggest illustrating the process of solving a literal equation with this flowchart method.

Flow Chart Method for Solving Literal Equations

Literal Equations Practice Activities

Just need some good old practice problems for solving literal equations for the specified variable? Here are a bunch of fun practice activities that will get your students working way more problems than your traditional literal equations worksheet without even realizing it! 

Literal Equations Connect 4 Activity

Literal Equations Drag and Drop Activity on Google Slides

Literal Equations Scavenger Hunt Activity

Solving Literal Equations Breakout Box Activity

Solving Literal Equations Maze Activity

Equation Rearrangement Multiple Choice Questions

The History of These Posters

The first iteration of these parent function posters was created by my husband and math teacher extraordinare, Shaun Carter. He created a free printable set of letter-sized parent function posters when he was teaching Algebra 2.

When my husband started grad school back in 2018 and I landed my current job (I was teaching Algebra 2 and Precalculus at the time), Shaun let me borrow his pretty set of laminated parent function posters to hang in my classroom.

I had these hanging in my classroom for several years, and I tried various different places to hang them. Some years, they were next to my dry erase board. One year I even taped them on top of a nonworking SMARTboard.

I kept running into an issue, though. I wanted all of my students to reference them, but they were kinda hard to see from certain parts of the room.

This year, I decided to take Shaun’s files for the parent function posters and put my own spin on them. Instead of making letter-sized posters, I opted to print my posters on 11 x 17 cardstock. By doubling the size of the posters, you can now easily see them no matter where you are sitting in my classroom.

They do take up more space, but I actually LOVE the effect they have had on my classroom decor. My wall of parent functions really does make me smile.

So I have to give a very special shout-out to my amazing husband. These posters were made possible thanks to his doing the difficult work of recreating the graphs of each of the functions back when he created the original letter-sized version of the posters.

Printing and Prepping the Posters

These posters are designed to print on ledger sized paper (11 inches x 17 inches). Your computer/printer may also refer to this as tabloid sized paper.

For my non-North American readers, you should be able to print the PDF file for these posters on A3 paper if you allow your pdf reader to scale the images slightly to fit.

I printed the posters on 11 x 17 cardstock. For years, this has been my go-to size for creating my own posters for my classroom. I really wish my school had a poster printer to create larger posters, but that is sadly not our reality…

To add a pop of color to the posters and make them stand out against the white walls of my classroom, I reprinted the names of each parent function on colored paper and glued it to the poster before running it through the laminator.

I was lucky to receive a grant this year for quite a few different classroom supplies including a 13 inch laminator and a box of 11 x 17 matte laminating pouches. Matte laminating pouches are significantly pricier than your typical laminating pouches, but they look so much nicer hanging on the wall because the fluorescent lights in my classroom ceiling cause an awful glare on regular lamination. These do look the tiniest bit cloudy when you are super close-up, but they look great from a normal distance away.

Don’t want to worry about cutting and pasting the parent function titles on in a different color? That’s totally okay. There is a plain version of the poster files available at the bottom of this post that require absolutely no cutting and pasting!

Classroom Display Ideas

After laminating the parent function posters, I created a classroom display with them by hanging them in a long line along one of the walls of my classroom. I hung them between the ceiling and a dry erase board.

I just can’t get over how perfect they look on the wall of my high school math classroom.

What Parent Functions are Included?

13 Parent Functions are included in the downloadable file. If your specific course or curriculum needs other parent functions, you should be able to download the editable PPT file and add additional parent functions to the posters as needed.

Here are the included parent functions:

• Constant
• Linear
• Absolute Value
• Quadratic (Parabola)
• Cubic
• Quartic
• Quintic
• Square Root
• Cube Root
• Rational (Hyperbola)
• Rational (Truncus)
• Exponential
• Logarithmic

Other Parent Function Posters

I also created a set of parent function posters for the 12 Basic Functions specified in the Demana & Waits Precalculus textbook.

Activities for Practicing the Quadratic Formula

These quadratic formula practice activities are sure to make class fun while practicing the quadratic formula.

Quadratic Formula Dry Erase Template

Quadratic Formula Faded Worksheet

Quadratic Formula Cut and Paste Activity

Quadratic Formula Notes

Looking for resources for teaching the quadratic formula? Check out these quadratic formula notes.

Quadratic Formula Foldable

Discriminant Foldable