Making the Point

The challenge posed by decimals and percents stumps me in my everyday life. When I worked in the post office and had to figure out the percentage increase or decrease in revenue or mail volume over the previous year, I would stare blankly at my computer screen trying to figure out how to formulate the equation, then eventually give up and turn to my co-worker who had do

ne well in high school math and at one point considered becoming a Certified Public Accountant. She always knew how to figure out the problem and, much as she tried to explain it to me, I just couldn't seem to wrap my brain around it. The games included in this blogpost give students practice converting decimals and percents into each other.

Jeopardy Math, complete with sound effects, follows the familiar Jeopardy format and quizzes students on fractions and decimals. Keep pencil and paper nearby when you play--you'll need it!

We love football in my house, and Power Football had us competing to solve decimal multiplication and division problems to score field goals and touchdowns and win the game.

The Decimals and Percents Game at math-play.com gives students timed, multiple choice quizzes designed to demonstrate th

eir understanding of how a number is represented as a decimal or as a percent. I struggled with this one and really feel like I need to get a better handle on these skills so that I at least know where to begin the process of figuring out these conversions.

Look it Up (If You Don't Believe Me)

I included this website for two reasons. The first is that it so thoroughly explains how to use a dictionary. I think we sometimes forget to explain this basic tool to students, and everything "dictionary" is covered here. The dictionary is the first reference I turn to and this site taught me a few new things. The second reason it's included is that my daughter attended Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo, California. Cuesta is a great community college for Big Island kids who want to get off the island but might miss the ocean and the climate too much. They can find both at Cuesta.

The engaging spelling games included on Gamesgames.com include

titles like Text Twist, Letter Detective and Word Mojo. The link will take you to a page with all these and more. The graphics are great and a wide subject matter gets covered.

So far in my teaching career I haven't seen a spelling bee in the classroom. Every year I like to watch the Hawaii State Spelling Bee on television. One year I knew one of the contestants and felt bad when he got eliminated. This spelling bee is a little less stressful.

If You Say So

Hi Students and Parents,

This week's blog post includes games to help students get a grip on the parts of speech and their agreement with each other. The names of parts of speech are used often and can even cause teachers to stop and think to make sure they understand the difference between prepositions, conjunctions, infinitives and others. The game "Parts of Speech Word Search" uses the popular "find the hidden word" format to identify common terms. Responses are timed and these key terms can be scrambled into plenty of new puzzles.

A great resource for internet learning games, Funbrain offers many interactive activities to reinforce the rules of writing. "The Plural Girls" emphasizes proper construction of plurals as students make their way through tricky English words that take more than an "s" to represent two or more.

The agreeable "CopyCat Game" quizzes tense agreement in an enjoyable fashion. Everythin

g sounds so positive in this game, as students select the answer that goes along with the original statement. You'll see what I mean.