Challenge of the Week

One fun math idea to incorporate as a weekly routine is a Challenge of the Week problem. It is optional for students to give it a try, but I've found that just by adding the word challenge and hyping it up a little bit...kids love to give it a shot! The problem is always an extension of what we are studying that week in class. I put each new challenge up on Monday morning and students have until the end of the day on Thursday to turn in their solutions to the turn in basket pictured. We go over the challenge every Friday after our daily warm-up problem. Students who answered the problem get a small prize (mints in my classroom!) and the recognition of solving the Challenge of the Week! Enjoy!

Both my 6th grade challenge problems and 8th grade challenge problems are FREE! Be sure to grab a copy and use them with your students!

Here was one of our first Challenge of the Week problems this year during our fraction multiplication unit.

Go Badgers...Wisconsin sports is a fairly common them in my classroom!

After multiplying fractions, we moved on to multiplying and dividing mixed numbers. I love how this problem really makes them work backwards and think about the process of multiplying fractions and mixed numbers!

As we moved into our rates and ratios unit, this problem was one of the more challenging this year.

My students get to know my love of baseball pretty early on in the year!

Another challenging rates and ratios problem. Especially letter c...

Here was a great problem that I used during our percents, fractions, and decimals unit a few weeks ago.

Another Problem of the Week from our percents, fractions, and decimals unit! This one was from later in the chapter when we learned how to find the percent of a number.

For our shortened Thanksgiving week, I got creative and researched some crazy Thanksgiving statistics. Seems like a lot of turkey per person, but I guess the stats don't lie!

Here is a challenge that relates to order of operations! I also had to show one of my students responses because of how complex it was. I love it when I see things like this in sixth grade! On the left is the problem of the week. On the right is one of my the student's response. I rewrote it so that I could go through it with all of my classes. They loved the challenge of having to use order of operations to solve such a complicated problem!

After introducing algebraic expressions at the beginning of our algebra units, here was a challenge of the week that I had A LOT of students try!

As we continued our units of algebra, here is a challenge of the week that I had students try BEFORE we learned about two-step equations. I liked the writing aspect of this problem, as well as how open-ended it is!

Once we learned about two-step equations, I made our challenge of the week a little tougher...fractions AND decimals!

More two-step equations! This challenge of the week was also a great review of dividing fractions and mixed numbers from the start of the year.

This challenge of the week involved finding a two-step rule for the function table!

This problem was as we were nearing the end of our algebra units. I like how it brought together everything that we had been learning about...equations, function tables, and graphs!

On to solving inequalities! This problem was before we had learned about solving two-step inequalities.

Two-step inequalities with fractions! This was a tricky one for the sixth graders!

This challenge of the week was just prior to learning how to find the measure of a reflex angle. I had a lot of students who remembered to subtract from 360 degrees!

This one was one of my favorites! Some students surprised me by finding angle C first. I hadn't even thought to solve it that way!

This problem sparked a fun discussion of the names of different polygons...including a megagon (1,000,000-sided polygon).

Translations, reflections, and rotations! Putting it all together! The rotation step was tricky for my students because most of the examples we did in class were rotated around the origin!

Moving on to areas...this problem was just after learning about how to find the area of parallelograms and triangles!

More work with areas! I really enjoyed creating these area challenge problems!

Putting it all together with a composite area problem. This was challenging with the two semi-circles!

Composite volumes...combining what we learned about finding the volume of rectangular prisms and pyramids!

This might have been my favorite problem to create! Who doesn't want to solve a problem with a floating pyramid inside of a rectangular prism!