A Sweet Way to Learn Math — Middle School Students Use M&Ms to Add Integers

This week, students in Jenn Dubeck’s 6^th Grade math classes discovered a sweet way to learn how to add integers — by using M&Ms.

In this fun exercise, each student began with 10 blue M&Ms (representing positive integers) and 10 red M&Ms (representing negative integers).  Using their M&Ms as counters, the students worked their way through several problems such as -5 + 1 and -4 + 3.

Of course, after the students represented and solved all of the math problems, they were rewarded with a chance to eat the M&Ms!