Featured Topic: Mathematical Poetry

Celebrate National Poetry Month by challenging students to write poems about mathematical concepts and terms. You may choose to read some of Greg Tang's books to introduce this topic or choose some examples from the resources below as examples of students' work.

  • Read examples of student Poetry Patterns written by students in Ms. Sweeney's classroom, Glazer Elementary School, Detroit, Michigan. Use Cinquain Directions to help students write original math cinquains.
  • Apply your writer's talent to the Geometry Meets Poetry webquest. Be sure to check out the Student Poems written for this webquest.
  • Use Shape Poems to help younger students learn these geometric terms.
  • NCTM's Illumination lesson, Shapes and Poetry, uses Shel Silverstein's "Shapes" poem to encourage students to write their own shape poems for a class collection.
  • Older students may enjoy creating Poetry in Math Puzzles to test their classmates' deductive skills.

Additional Math-Poetry Resources

You Can, Toucan, Math: Word Problem-Solving Fun

David Adler, a former math teacher, uses rhyme to pose math word problems requiring students to figure out if they must add, subtract, multiply or divide to find the correct answer. Extend this book by challenging students to write their own "poetic word problems."



Earth Day Math Activities


Earth Day Math-Literature Connections

Earth Day -- Hooray!

Stuart J. Murphy incorporates place value into Earth Day cleanup and recycling activities in this Mathstart, Level 3 book. Use the book as a jumpstart for your Earth Day investigations.


Math Manipulatives Series: Investigating Dominoes

The second installment of this series is now online. Math Manipulatives: Investigating Dominoes is a one-stop resource for dominoes that includes games, math-literature connections, problem solving, templates and links to additional online resources to help students use dominoes to develop number sense. Be sure to check out the Domino Fun section at the bottom of this page to view some amazing Domino Art and to master a domino trick that will astound your students!


Recent Additions to Mathwire.com

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About Mathwire.com

Mathwire.com is designed to provide activities and appropriate worksheets for teachers to use in their classrooms.   All activities and worksheets support the constructivist approach to learning mathematics and the NCTM Standards.

Activities:   The activities on this site were developed by Terry Kawas and the teachers in districts where she has worked as a math consultant and coach or with students she has taught in college math-methods courses.   The activities are classroom-tested by teachers and appropriate modifications have been made to reflect this field-testing.   These activities are posted online in an effort to share quality activities and routines within the mathematics community.

Terms of Use:   Teachers are welcome to download any of the activities for free use in their classrooms.   No activities may be copied for use on other websites or included in commercial products without permission in writing from Terry Kawas, webmaster.   Contact Terry Kawas