Fantasy Football

In the midst of another NFL season, we introduce students to Fantasy Football. Students first calculate football points given touchdowns, yardage gains and interceptions. They are then challenged to generalize an equation that gives a player's total fantasy points. Students solve equations as they try to find the number of passes, touchdowns, or interceptions that yield given point totals.  Students can also compete in their own fantasy football competition within the class.  This lesson is ideal for teachers that want to work on equations with their students or for a group of football fans.  You can also read one math teacher's experience with this lesson at her blog: MightyMiddleSchoolMath.

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Will the new iPhone sales be huge?

Apple just announced their new, 10th anniversary, iPhones, the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X.  These phones will soon be in stores, the iPhone 8 comes out on September 22, 2017. The iPhone X is available as of November 3rd.  What will their record sales be like this time?  How many iPhones will they sell?

In this activity students explore past iPhone sales by year and try to predict how many iPhone 7's, 8's, and X's will be sold during the 2017 sales year as well as in the future.

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BIG Snickers bar

GiantSnicker'sBar Wow!  This snickers bar is huge!

Act 1 - Big question = How many times bigger than a regular Snickers bar is this?

  • What info would you like to know?
  • How are you going to judge how much bigger this is ... weight, dimensions, volume?

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How much does the biggest Lego set ever cost?

Note: This is a remake of our 2014 "How Much Does a Lego Cost" activity

How much could the Lego Millennium Falcon cost?

Student first make a guess and then think about what information would be useful in order to determine the actual cost.

Then they use a random sample of Lego products to help figure the cost of this massive Star Wars kit.  Students might take an average cost per block from the sample and proportionately extend that to the number of blocks in this kit.

Older students might make a scatter plot of the data and determine a line of best fit that models the cost of a kit for any number of bricks.  Students might use their model to find the cost or number of blocks in other kits.

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Hurricanes

Clicking on the image will show it larger in a new window.

The official Atlantic hurricane season started on June 1 and doesn’t end until November 30th. Now Hurricane Irma is approaching Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, and Florida.

Encourage your students to join the conversation, knowledgeably, by using our activity.  Students read about hurricane classfications and calculate the possible increases in destruction from various scaled events.  Estimation, data analysis with graphs to study trends, damage expense, average frequency, and histogram are all part of this lesson.

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Going back to school posts

Who's going back to school? - Students calculate the historical changes in U.S. population percentages of people who are going back to school and try to formulate reasons for these variations. 6.EE, 6.RP.3, 6.SP, 7.EE, 7.RP.3, 7.SP

Does it pay to get educated? - Students compare the earning power for people who have invested time, effort, and often money in order to strengthen their education and learning. 4.OA.2, 5.NBT.5, 6.RP.3, 6.NS.3, 6.SP.3 6.SP.4, 6.SP.5, 7.SP.4, MP.1, MP.3

How much does it cost to send you back to school? - Students work together to create a back-to-school needs list; confer and research to estimate the cost of these items; tally and compare the whole class's estimations. The final question concerns the amount of time needed to work to earn enough for these costs. 4.OA.3, 4.NBT.3, 6.SP.3, 6.SP.5, 7.EE.3, MP5, HSF, HSA