Middle School Math with Pizzazz!

Middle School Math with Pizzazz! is a series of five books designed to provide practice with skills and concepts taught in today’s upper elementary and middle school math programs. Here are the topics covered in each book:

Book A • Basic Facts; Place Value and Numeration; Operations with Whole Numbers
Book B • Problem-Solving Strategies; Decimal Numeration; Operations with Decimals; Problem Solving with a Calculator
Book C • Number Theory; Fractions; Operations with Fractions; Fractions and Decimals
Book D • Measurement; Geometry; Perimeter and Area; Surface Area and Volume; Square Roots and Right Triangles
Book E • Ratio and Proportion; Percent; Statistics and Graphs; Probability; Integers; Coordinate Graphing; Equations

We believe that mastery of math skills and concepts requires both good teaching and lots of practice. Our goal is to provide puzzle activities that make this practice more meaningful and effective. To this end, we have tried to build certain features into these activities:

KNOWLEDGE OF RESULTS. Various devices are used so that students know immediately after doing each exercise whether or not their answer is correct. For example, if a particular answer is not in the code or scrambled answer list, the student knows it is incorrect. S/he can then try again or ask for help. Additional confirmation occurs when the student finds an appropriate puzzle solution. Students work with greater confidence, and teachers spend less time confirming correct answers.

A MOTIVATING GOAL FOR THE STUDENT. The puzzles are designed so that students will construct a joke or unscramble a punchline in the process of checking their answers. The humor acts as an incentive, because students are not rewarded with the punchline until they complete the exercises. While students may decry these jokes as “dumb” and groan loudly, they are motivated to get the punchlines and experience a sense of closure and success when they do. In addition to humor, the variety and novelty of procedures for solving the puzzles help capture student interest. By keeping answer lists short and procedures simple, we have tried to minimize the time spent finding answers or doing other puzzle mechanics.

CAREFUL SELECTION OF TOPICS AND EXERCISES. The puzzles within each topic are carefully sequenced so that each one builds on skills and concepts previously covered. The sequence of exercises within each puzzle is designed to guide students in incremental, step-by-step fashion toward mastery of the skill or concept involved. A primary goal is the development of problem-solving ability, and we have tried to illustrate the application of many skills with problems that are interesting and uncontrived. An important discrimination for students is whether a problem should be done mentally or using tools such as paper/pencil or calculator. Do you need the exact answer or just an estimate? Several of the puzzles in this series focus specifically on helping students understand this discrimination and apply the appropriate method.

In addition to these efforts to make the puzzles effective, we have tried to make them easy to use. Each puzzle is keyed to a specific topic listed in the table of contents and on the page itself. Many puzzles provide space for student work and, hopefully, their self-correcting feature will lighten the burden of correcting assignments. Please check out some sample puzzles to see if they would work for you.