The combined seventh-grade and eighth-grade class began each day with a mathematical reasoning question as a warm-up activity. One day's question was: Is the product of two odd numbers always an odd number? The students took sides on the issue, and the exercise ended in frustration. Reflecting on the frustration caused by this warm-up activity,…

This article describes an activity that incorporates 9 of the 10 National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Standards. Students explore a stacking garden containing multiple layers. The garden allows students to focus on finding the amount of border material needed and the amount of space available for planting. The problem balances the…