Many years ago, I had the pleasure of hearing Marcy Cook speak. She is a well-known math specialist and presenter of seminars and workshops all over the world, and if you’ve never attended one of her sessions, I highly recommend it!
In my district, the goal for our gifted students has always been to create multidisciplinary units that integrate thinking, technology tools, and the core disciplines of math, literature, social studies, and science. However, sometimes advanced math that requires critical thinking and logic is presented through independent hands-on tasks or at centers.
Here is a quick overview of the March Cook math materials I used in my gifted pull-out classes:
(1) Contrasting Facts – (Grades 3 -5) In this “cooperative trivia” activity, students guess a pair of numbers related to a statistic. Then, as clues are revealed and they have more information, they adjust their guesses. Before the final clue is revealed, students have had sufficient clues to narrow the two numbers down to two or three possibilities. The final clue will only work for one of those possibilities. The teachers in my district created slide shows so that the clues could be revealed one at a time. Here is how my students set up their papers (in their notebooks).
(2) Number Tile Activities For these hands-on activities, each student needs ten number tiles, labeled 0 through 9. You can purchase Quiet Tiles or make your own sets by writing the numbers on foam tiles with a thin permanent marker. Activities I would recommend for K-2 advanced students include Crayon Logic, Find the X Tile, Bunny Function Tiles, Turn Over Tiles to Find X, Early Communicating with Tiles and Act it Out: Logic for Young Thinkers. For advanced math students in upper elementary grades, you might like to try Find the X Tile, Follow the Clues With Tiles, Know the Numbers, Math Starters and Stumpers, or Form an Equation.
There are other materials that I’ve not tried but would like to including If… Then… Think and Think Again and Talk it Over.
Have you used any Marcy Cook Math materials in your GT classroom or for math enrichment for students? Share in the comments below! And, if you’re interested in having new ideas, lessons, and activities sent directly to you, you might like to subscribe.