Bring a little art into your math class as you begin to use the Pythagorean theorem and your students first meet irrational numbers.
Earth Day, 2018 – 12 activities
Sunday, April 22nd is Earth Day - There is so much to bring to your classroom to support recycling, conserving resources, studying climate change and protecting our planet.
Have you seen more Monarch butterflies lately? - Students read charts, do a little research, and make observations about the decline and resurgence of Monarchs. MP4, 3.MD, 6.RP.A, 7.RP.A, 7.EE, 8.EE, HSN
Measuring sea levels - We've given students a diagram of what the interior of this mechanism contains and asked them to try to decide what its purpose must be. Then we've given them the data that was collected from this place and others globally and asked what they can conclude. 6.RP.3, 7.RP.1, 8.EE.B.5, 8.F.B.4, HSS.ID.C.7, HSF.IF.B.6, MP8
Should I replace my toilets? - I have really old fashioned toilets and I'm trying to figure out if I should invest in saving water. Can you help me? 8.F.3, 8.F.4, 8.F.5, HSF.IF.B.4, HSF.IF.B.6, HSF.IF.C.7, HSF.IF.C.9, HSF.LE.A.2, HSF.LE.B.5
How fast can you run?
In preparation for the Boston Marathon, we thought that an analysis of running speeds might be appropriate.
Have you heard of The Six Million Dollar Man? He was the character in a science fiction show about an astronaut that was rebuilt, bionically, after his space ship crashed. He could run at 67 miles per hour.
This activity compares the best short and long distance record speeds as students learn the logic and mechanics of using fractional expressions for the number one to convert meters per second to kilometers per hour, etcetera.
Jackie Robinson
April 15th, 1947 was a date to remember. Jackie Robinson became the first African-American baseball player to play in Major League Baseball since the game was segregated in the 1890s. Robinson broke the baseball color barrier when the Brooklyn Dodgers started him in 1947 on 2nd base.
The movie "42" is the story of Jackie Robinson. Robinson contributed to the civil right's movement and paved the way for African-Americans to be accepted into professional sports. He went on to have a great ten year career in Major League Baseball and was later inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame. Due to his time in the military and segration, Robinson did not play MLB until he was 28 years old. He missed some of the prime years of his career.
In this activity we consider how many hits and homeruns Jackie might have had if he had begun his MLB career at the age of 20. We also take a look at the value of his first baseball card and speculate how much the card will be worth in the future.
What me? Irrational?
We've found that some students believe that the approximation that their calculators show for irrational numbers is exact. Here's an activity that you can advertise as long multiplication review. After they study our calculations have a discussion just to clarify what they know and bring home the notion of approximations.
The activity: squaring-square-roots.pdf
Pizza party figuring
In this activity students decide how to divide 2 pizzas amongst 6 adults and 3 pizzas amongst 8 kids. Fractional pizza parts need to be drawn and considerations discussed about which fractions are greater. Students interpret a fraction as division of the numerator by the denominator (a/b = a ÷ b). Wicked fun, warm, and tasty.