Games That Make You Smarter

AnnMaria De Mars

Tic-tac-toe game for teaching multiplication — If you teach math, you are well aware of how essential it is that students learn basics such as multiplication and division. Of course math shouldn’t be all about rote memorization but if you believe it is a waste of time for students to memorize 9 x 7 = 63 […]

Teaching multiplication: Lesson Plan

August 19, 2019 in 10 Minute Lesson / 7GenGames / Cultural content / Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games / Educational Resources / Fourth Grade / multiplication / Third Grade tagged Multiplication Games / teaching multiplication by AnnMaria De Mars

Introducing fractions can be done with anything , like that 2/8 of these snakes are brown — STANDARD: Understand a fraction a/b with a > 1 as a sum of fractions 1/b AAGH! It’s August and almost back to school time. Maybe you are that super-teacher who has everything ready. For the rest of you mere humans, who wish you could have a lesson plan together in just 10 minutes, have […]

Introducing Fractions : Lesson Plan

August 6, 2019 in 10 Minute Lesson / Educational Resources / Fifth Grade / Fourth Grade / fractions / Mathematics tagged examples of fraction problems / introducing fractions by AnnMaria De Mars

Train to San Diego — In today’s episode of Startup Travel , Latinas in Tech or Where in the World are the Founders …. I’m writing this from the Pacific Surfliner, the train that runs between Los Angeles and San Diego. Being an American living on the west coast, every single time I go to […]

UnidosUS: Trains, planes and social impact startups

August 2, 2019 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries / Women in Tech tagged Latinx startups / social impact startups / UnidosUS by AnnMaria De Mars

You can use doughnuts to teach adding fractions — Our Teachers Pay Teachers site gave us some surprising insight on teachers Did I just say teachers too many times in the same sentence? When people ask me what makes us different at 7 Generation Games, I often reply, because we understand something … Schools exist outside of the Silicon […]

Four Things Teachers Pay Teachers Taught Us

July 25, 2019 in Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Have you ever read an article where you think the author was reading your mind because it said all of the things you have been thinking? This happened to me lately in, of all places, the Harvard Business Review blog. The title of the article was “We are all Enron […]

The Golden Rule of Business

July 11, 2019 in AnnMaria / blogposts by AnnMaria De Mars

3 men and a buffalo — 10-minute lesson on primary sources Have your students watch the following two videos back to back. Not the galloping buffalo, the video below that. These two videos together are great resources for a lesson on the value of primary sources. Becoming a Buffalo Hunter How did you learn to hunt […]

Are primary sources important in learning history?

July 8, 2019 in 10 Minute Lesson / Cultural content / Educational Resources / History / Teachers by AnnMaria De Mars

Mayan god-king from AzTech Games — Social Studies key terms and concepts videos and slides – free! I know these are concerns for Social Studies teachers because our video on TeacherTube on history terms had been viewed 50,000 times before we inadvertently copied over it a month ago with the exact same video to include our […]

Social Studies Key Terms and Concepts

July 4, 2019 in Educational Resources / Sixth Grade / Teachers tagged social studies / timelines by AnnMaria De Mars

Meg and Joe teach problem-solving strategies with apples — Don’t I Know It’s Summer? Why am I bothering you? Okay, I know, I know. It’s summer and you don’t want to think about lesson planning. Don’t I know that you only get a few weeks off each year and, for God’s sake, you’d like to take a break! Yes, […]

Resources for Teaching Problem-Solving Strategies

July 2, 2019 in Educational Resources / Fifth Grade / Fourth Grade / Math / Mathematics / problem-solving / Sixth Grade / Teachers by AnnMaria De Mars

Cluttered shed that inspired middle school game design ideas — We’re wrapping up the game design class at Spirit Lake this week. Two weeks was the most time I could spare away from the office but we have accomplished a lot. Applications used in game design by middle school students Because all of the students had just completed grades 4 […]

Game Design by Middle School Students

June 18, 2019 in Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games / rural education tagged Warwick by AnnMaria De Mars

Creepy house selected in photo curation by Warwick students — ked students to select their favorite photo they took yesterday, crop it as they saw fit and share with me on One Drive and/ or email to me. The point of this lesson was to learn about file-sharing, photo editing and emailing attachments.

Warwick Game Design Class Photo Curation

June 12, 2019 in 7GenGames / AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

dirt road in Warwick, North Dakota — It’s been a great start to the summer session teaching game design at Warwick Middle School. Students started off playing two math games, an adventure game and a collector game. We discussed the idea of game genre and what is needed to make a video game – assets, code, story […]

Teaching Game Design at Spirit Lake

June 11, 2019 in 7GenGames / AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games / rural education / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Graph explaining Buffalo herd statistics — Dates on the calendar are closer than they appear! I know you just got out of school a week ago, or maybe you still have a few days to go. Lesson plans to teach statistics are the last thing you want to think about. Trust me, you’ll thank me later. […]

Resources to Teach Statistics in Elementary and Middle School

June 9, 2019 in AnnMaria / Educational Resources / Sixth Grade tagged lesson plans by AnnMaria De Mars