Passover Macaroons 2012
Passover begins this year on Friday evening, April 6th, with a Passover seder dinner. Passover is one of the three high holidays in the Jewish religion and celebrates the Exodus of Jews from slavery in Egypt.
Let your students review fractions in this investigation on halving and tripling the fractional quantities of ingredients in a Passover macaroon recipe. Choose whether you want students to consider what the general rule might be for increasing or decreasing this recipe by using the more advanced, rule document below.
Passover always begins on the 14th day of Nissan on the Hebrew calendar but that day translates to a range of Spring days in the Gregorian calendar. For an interesting investigation of the Hebrew calendar go here.
Working with fractions activity: macaroon-frac.pdf
Solutions and editable Word doc for members:
macaroon-frac-solutions.pdf macaroon-frac.doc
Generalizing a rule activity: macaroons-frac-rule.pdf
Solutions and editable Word doc for members:
macaroons-solutions-frac-rule.pdf macaroons-frac-rule.doc
CCSS: 5.NF, 6.NS, 7.NS, 7.EE
Opening weekend
Hunger Games is the latest popular movie to make a big weekend splash. Can you tell from its opening weekend how the movie will do in the long run?
This activity can be done for any new movie on the scene. We’ve left blank spaces in our chart for students to add their favorites and we’ve told them where to find the data online.
Students create a scatter plot with the data and decide if they can, in fact, predict the future.
For members we have an editable Word doc, solutions, and an Excel data sheet with the chart.
Opening-Days.doc Opening-Days-solutions.pdf opening-day-chart.xlsx
CCSS: 6.SP, 7.SP, 8.EE, 8.SP, S-ID
Big Bucks
Peyton Manning and Albert Pujols signed big contracts during the winter of 2011-2012, paying each of them millions. Lets take a look at some of the world’s biggest sports contracts from the NBA, the NFL, MLB and European Football (what Americans call soccer). Students find the average pay per year or “unit rate of pay” for each athlete. Finally, we make some comparisons between top earners in sports and top earners in the entertainment industry. Students think about unit rate, proportionality and the relationship between multiplication and division. This could be one of the most interesting unit rate activities ever!
For members we have an editable Word doc and solutions.
big-bucks.doc big-bucks-solutions.pdf
CCSS: 6.RP.2 and 3, 6.SP, 7.RP, 7.SP, 8.EE
Budget 2012
Show our debt clock to your class and ask your students some questions.
- What do you see happening on this clock?
- When will the U. S. hit the next trillion dollars deficit milestone?
- How fast is the deficit increasing every hour?
The 2012 and 2013 budgets have been the cause of much party debate. Help your students understand the deficit and our National debt with this timely activity involving percent calculations, conclusions from graphic representations, and comparisons of growth.
For members we have solutions and editable Word documents.
DVR Dilemma
I absolutely love my DVR. I can record my shows and movies and watch them whenever I want. I know that when I record HD programs my DVR fills up fast. To account for that I often record shows in non-HD (SD format). This has me wondering: can I use some basic info that my DVR is giving to me to determine how many hours of HD and/or non-HD programming that my DVR can record? Check out the video to get started.
In the video I delete a SD (non-HD) program. Then I delete an HD program. How can I use this video to help me better understand the HD and SD storage that my DVR can hold?
If I only record HDTV programming on my DVR about how many hours of recording time will I have? How do you know?
If I only record SD (non-HD) programming on my DVR about how many hours of recording time will I have? How do you know?
How many hours of SD programming can I record for every hour of HD programming?
Should I consider my calculations as an estimate or exact? If an estimate, then how much HD and SD recording time might my DVR actually have? What values make sense?
For members we have Word docs and solutions.
DVR-Dilemma.doc DVR-Dilemma-solutions.pdf
CCSS: 6.RP, 6.EE, 7.RP, 7.EE, 8.EE.5, A-CED
March Madness
March Madness is upon us. Selection Sunday was March 11th and the first round of playoffs is March 13th and 14th.
Engage your students in probability, combinations, operations with scientific notation, and percents as they get excited about March Madness.
For members we have a Word doc, an Excel chart and solutions.
march-madness2012.doc march-madness.xls march-madness2012-solutions.pdf
CCSS: 2.MD.10, 5.NBT, 7.RP, 7.NS, 8.EE.3 , 8.EE.4
Green, green river
During the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Chicago, the local plumbers union dyes the Chicago River emerald green. Students learn what PPM (parts per million) means and attempt to figure out how much dye is used to sufficiently color the river. Proportions … ratios … fun.
dyeing-chicago-river-green.pdf
For members we have editable Word docs and solutions.
dyeing-chicago-river-green.doc dyeing-chicago-river-solutions.pdf
CCSS: 5.MD, 6.RP, 6.G, 7.RP, 7.G
Pi Day – 3.14@1:59:26 pm
March 14th is almost here. Celebrate π in your school and in your math classes with activities that:
Demonstrate how π was derived,
Show a surprising place where π is used,
Increase students ability to measure and long divide,
Applauds the talent of people who can memorize large strings of numbers,
And lets students just have fun.
CCSS: 7.G.4, 7.G.6, 8.NS.1, G-C.2
GeoGebra has a great demo to show that the area of a circle can be shown as any number of pie slices rearranged into a parallelogram. The GeoGebraTube Area of Circles applet was created by Anthony Or, Education Bureau, Hong Kong. Brian made a video to show you how to use the GeoGebra applet or to simply show your math class.
For members we have a Word doc that can be modified and solutions.
Shamrock Shake
For Saint Patrick’s Day add a little nutrition math to your celebration. In this post we look at calories, carbohydrates, sugars, fats, and proteins to decide what would be left for our day’s meal allotment after we had lunch and a Shamrock Shake at McDonald’s. Wicked green fun.
For members we have an editable Word document and solutions.
ShamrockShake.doc ShamrockShake-solutions.pdf
CCSS: 6.SP, 6.RP, 7.SP
Tornadoes 2012
Involve your students in better understanding of the damage caused by tornadoes by using our investigation. Students will learn about the Enhanced Fujita Scale (EF scale), the usual locations and the time of year when tornadoes are most likely to occur, and they can begin to analyze the incredible data that is kept by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
For members we have an editable Word document and solutions.
It sure is cold out … or is it?
Students ponder the relationship between place latitudes and average January temperatures while they try to discover a correlation. Is this a linear or near linear relationship? … averaging, missing data for averaging, line of best fit, Google Earth, world locations, linear review, extrapolation … This lesson is chocked full of interesting mathematics and world awareness.
For members we have Word docs, solutions and graphs.
cold-out.doc cold-out-solutions.pdf
CCSS: 6.SP, 7.SP, 8.EE.5, 8.F, 8.SP, A-CED, F-IF, F-LE, S-ID
Linsanity
Jeremy Lin is the New York Knicks most startling player. His story is exciting in that he graduated from Harvard in 2010 and was not immediately drafted into the NBA. At first he was playing in the NBA Development League (D-League) but has been playing in the starting line-up of the Knicks since early February.
Brian’s written an investigation that involves analyzing Lin’s strengths and weakness as a point guard. Bring Linsanity into your classroom with this great activity.
For members we have Word docs, solutions and an Excel file for this post.
Jeremy_Lin.doc Jeremy_Lin-solution.pdf LIN.xls
ESPN Sports Science video clip on Jeremy Lin has plenty of math in it for discussion. (skip the commercial)
CCSS: 6.RP, 7.RP, 7.SP, 8.SP
All Star Game 2012
The NBA All Star game is being held on February 26th. Did you know that this was the third major professional sport all star game in the last month. The NFL Pro Bowl and the NHL All Star Game were also recently held. MLB has their all star game, called the Mid – Summer Classic in July.
In this activity we compare viewership all star games, championship games and typical regular season games in each of the four major North American sports (NHL, NFL, NBA and MLB). How do the ratings of all star games compare to the championship and regular season games in the same sport?
Students make observations from the data and determine which league’s all star game seems to be the least successful. There will be many ways to define which league’s all star game is the least successful and the goal here is to keep the spotlight on student mathematical ideas.
Finally students use proportional reasoning to determine how much a 30-second ad during each all star game should cost based off of the fee and viewership of a 30-second Super Bowl ad.
For members we have Word docs and solutions.
all-star-game2012.doc all-star-game-solutions2012.pdf
CCSS: 6.RP, 6.SP.5, 7.RP
*** Plus *** Don’t forget that we have Oscar and Leap Day activities for this week.
Leap Day
Let your students do a little math to check the accuracy and system of leap year calendar adjustments in honor of February 29th.
For members we have Word docs and solutions.
Leap-day.doc Leap-day-solutions.pdf
CCSS: 6.NS, 7.NS, N-Q.3
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