Winter Solstice – Students appreciate how their latitude effects the darkness of their late afternoon location as they study the earth’s tilt and the logic of daylight hours. 7.G.3, HSG.C, HSG.GMD.4, HSG.MG.1 – Updated for 2018! Soda Santa – First students guess too…
Sunday evening, December 2nd, is the first night of Hanukkah this year. I think it was much later in December last year. Why isn’t it always on the same date? Students look at the Hebrew calendar and appreciate the incredible…
Consumers in the U.S. spend a lot of money. In this activity we look at historical data to see if there are any patterns in our spending. How does our holiday spending show up in these graphs? What accounts for…
As Veterans Day approaches, let your students learn about and appreciate the meaning of the day by analyzing the powerful data that we’ve supplied. Students can use our numbers to create questions for their classmates … questions that can emphasize the tremendous gift…
The growing deficits of our government and accumulated debt are constantly in the news. Allow your students to investigate these concepts and their causes with this timely activity. The activity involves reading charts, making comparisons, computing percents and analyzing trends…
Will November 6th election bring record number of voters to the polls? Students get a chance to understand what the usual percentage of voters is, look for trends and central tendencies, and make predictions about this year’s voter turnout. The…
Daylight Saving time is controversial, disruptive, useful, saves energy, increases energy consumption, is inconvenient … Imagine locations where neighbors are differentiated by one or two hours and experiment with what it might be like to live in a neighborhood of…
The Niña Columbus Day is a bit of an enigma that used to be celebrated throughout all of the Americas. Indigenous people were not treated well by the European colonization that began with Columbus’s voyage. For that reason, many U.S.states…
Updated! Why should students do well in school, graduate high school, or go on to college? In this activity median earnings by various education levels are explored. Students compare the earnings of a non-high school grad with workers who graduated…
Talk like a pirate day is September 19th. Bring some humor and marketing understanding into your class with this activity about a silly holiday that has had viral growth. What happens when you tell 5 people and then each of…
Nike has just chosen a surprising person to represent the 30th anniversary of their slogan, “Just Do It”. Colin Kaepernick, past quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, has been a subject of controversy since 2016 when he “took a knee”…
In this short activity, students learn the meaning and history of Labor Day as they look for patterns emerging from the Labor Day dates over the past years. Students then use those observed patterns to predict future dates of the…
Back to school spending is huge and students might not appreciate what it costs to send them back to, essentially, their job of learning. In this activity students decide what equipment and supplies are necessary, estimate how much that will…
In this investigation students calculate the percentage of the U.S. population (current and historically) that are enrolled in K-12 schools. They are asked to draw conclusions from these variations. Finally, they use their calculations to predict the number of enrolled…
All the ice cream that you can eat for only 10 cents! Wow, that’s a great deal! How great a deal was that? The history of the Dairy Queen franchise began with this ad in Illinois in 1938. I know…
