Digital Math Activities for the Middle School Math Class

As more and more teachers and students are using the digital games on my site, I’ve received a few commonly asked questions, so I’m taking some time to answer them here, for anyone who has the same questions, but hasn’t asked:-)

Evolution of the Digital Math Activities:
Quick background:
The digital math activities page of this site has been active since August 2019. It started out with 14 Truth or Dare math games for only members to use. Over the past years, I’ve added several free activities for anyone to play, as well as many new member activities (over 50 as of Aug 2022).

I’ve migrated the activities from my blog to a stand-alone math activities site, called cognitivecardiomiddleschoolmathdigitalactivities.com  

• On that site, I added ‘upgraded’ versions of the free activities to the member section – I added question banks and more exercises to them, so students don’t get the same questions each time.
• So, while you may see the ‘same’ activity on both the Free and Member pages, the activities aren’t quite the same. 

On to the FAQs…

Q: How do I know what content is in the activities?
A: This document gives an overview of the current activities – content covered, types of questions, number of questions in the question banks. (Plus, there’s a free trial week July 22 – 28 so you can check out all the activities – you can sign up at the bottom of this post.)

Question: Do students get the same math questions every time they do an activity?
A: For the Truth or Dare games: yes. The logic in designing the Truth or Dares was pretty intense and can’t be quickly changed to offer different questions each time.
For all other member activities: NO. All the other member activities will pull from question banks, so while a student may get one or two repeat questions when they play multiple times, the entire set of questions they see will be a bit different each time.
For free activities: yes​Question: How many students can log in at once?
A: As many students as you want. Students use a password to access each activity and there’s no limit to the number of students who can access at the same time. None of the teachers who’ve used the site have reported issues with using the password/logging in.

Q: How are teachers using the digital math activities?
A:  Teachers are using the activities for:

• Math centers 
• Choice time 
• Math enrichment activities
• In-class, whole-group activity
• Independent math practice 
• Online/distance learning

Q: How are parents and tutors using the activities?
A: Both parents and tutors have been using the digital math activities to provide extra practice/reinforcement for students at home.

Q: Can I assign an activity in Google Classroom?
A: Yes!  Each activity has its own link, so you can assign an activity by adding the link to your assignment in Google Classroom. In the left image below, I circled the instructions I might write for students; and I circled the ‘Link’ section under ‘Add.’ This is where you’ll add the link to the activity you want to assign. In the right image, you can see the way the link appears for students (since the page is password protected, that does show in the assignment.)

Q: How do I see students’ results?
A: All of the digital math activities show results in some form. For example, the Truth or Dare games have an “Answer Sheet” (shown below). Many of the other activities show students’ points on the main screen; some show the point totals on an ending results screen. Others show results by color, like the absolute value activity shown below (green for correct, red for incorrect).​Regardless of where the results are shown in the activity, students need to take a screenshot of their results page to send to you (or upload into Google Classroom, or another LMS you may be using.) Unfortunately, the software I use can’t be programmed to report scores to all the different LMSs classes are using. 

The image below shows the student side of Google Classroom, with the screenshot of the results page.* The Truth or Dare games do have a Print button on the Answer Sheet, so if you’re in the classroom and students can access a printer, they could print their results.