Positive and Negative Integer Activities

Changes required in education to help students learn include a focus on student centered teaching and learning.

Math is one of the most challenging subjects for students and needs to be more than just worksheets and drill-n-skill.

The skills in involved in teaching math require more than just knowing math - it requires presenting activities that help students challenge their prior knowledge and experiences to fully understand a math concept.

This requires students use the same math concept in a variety of ways so that they can see the connections between concept and real world applications. This is important at all levels of math; however, I will focus on three elementary math teaching strategies.

Three Integer Math Teaching Activities

The following different strategies for teaching the same math concept - positive and integer numbers.

Integer War Card Game – groups of four students use playing cards in this challenge.

• Red numbers and face cards represent negative integers.
• Black numbers and face cards represent positive integers.
• Aces = 1
  
• Kings = 13
• Queens = 12
• Jacks = 11
• Students play war until the first student in the group reaches either a positive or negative 25.

Integer Challenge – students create five different ways of using positive and negative integers to equal 50.

• Students are not allowed to use a positive or negative 50 integer..

Positive and Negative Integers Rules – students explain the rules for using positive and negative integers, along with 5 examples for each rule as follows:

• Adding positive and negative integers
• Subtracting positive and negative integers
• Dividing positive and negative integers
• Multiplying positive and negative integers
  

If you have any other suggestions, feel free to share your ideas here.