This Monday Americans will celebrate Memorial Day. Who are we honoring? How did the holiday come about? Isn’t Memorial Day usually on May 30th? Students learn a little about the history of the holiday, analyze the possibilities and patterns for when…
This weekend is the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markel. This will be quite an event and we can expect it to dominate the media. What have you heard about the event? What interests you? The mathematics in this…
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…
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…
April Fools Day ideas – We have two strange mathematical riddles to decipher; a “why does this work?” task using the Ghost Whisperer; and Robert Kaplinsky’s Foil Prank. Take your choice! MP.1, MP3,4.OA, 5.G, 8.EE, 8.SP Peeps – Students estimate the number of Peeps sold…
Which Sweet Heart candies are the best deal? – Students decide which quantity of Sweet Heart candies is the best deal. Ratio tables, unit ratios, devising convincing arguments. 6.RP.2, 6.RP.3, 7.RP.2 Sweetheart Candies – unit rate and ratio activity using those little candy…
Year of the wood dog Lunar New Year begins on Friday, February 16th. This will be the year of the Wood Dog. The year name is a combination of 10 Heavenly Stems and 12 Earthly Branches creating a sequence of…
Scoring Ski jumping – The scoring rubric for each of the Olympic events is intended to eliminate the possibility of scoring bias from the judges. Let your students learn more about the scoring of one event and decide whether it seems fair…
The Philadelphia police are being proactive about keeping their enthusiastic Eagles fans from being reckless as they celebrate Super Bowl outcomes. So, the police departments have been frosting the city light poles with Crisco shortening to help discourage fans from…
Clicking on this image will show it larger in a new window. Hosting the Olympics sure does cost a lot. Why is that? How much money is $5 billion dollars? What is a cost overrun? Why would a country want…
On October 24, 2017, the Olympic flame was captured on Mount Olympus, Greece. (Lighting the Olympic Torch). That flame lit one of this year’s Olympic Torches and the Torch relay was begun on its way to the opening Winter Olympic…
Timelines for the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr. – Students create one of two timelines about Martin Luther King Jr’s life or the efforts in America to create a racial balance in the U.S. 3.MD, 4.MD, 5.MD, 6.RP, 6.G,…
There is some beautiful land in Utah that was just recently changed from federally protected land to mostly Utah overseen land. What was the point of that? Was the land needed to allow for population expansion or what? Let your…
On Saturday evening, December 31st, 2017 at 12:59 pm, much of the world will be watching the iconic Times Square Tower’s New Year’s Eve ball drop 141 feet to the roof of the One Times Square Building in Manhattan, NY. This…
Do I have enough wrapping paper? – Students estimate the size of a gift and decide if the given wrapping paper is going to be enough. Finally they try to create a rule for determining enough wrapping paper from a present’s…