In this 3-act activity, students look for a pattern to count these cans. Canstruction is an annual event that takes place just before Thanksgiving in cities throughout the world to raise money and gather food for local food banks.
Canstruction
Tag: 3-act task
Drill bit fractions
Act One: Drill bits are measured by the diameter of the bit in inches. The drill bits below are ordered left to right in increasing size. The numerators in the fractions have been blacked out. What could the numerators be? Explain your…
Stacking Jack
Act One: Check out the video slide show. What questions do you have? The Activity: Stacking Jack Suggested Question: How many different ways can I stack Jack? That is, how many different color arrangements are there? If I wanted to take…
This must be a huge beach towel!
Act One: Check out this beach towel! What do you wonder? What would you like to know? Miami artist, Misael Soto (pictured on the left below), created this giant art project to make a statement about people sharing territory at the beach.…
How many lights should I buy for my tree?
Check out our Christmas Tree. We need to buy lights for the tree. Without calculating, guess how many feet of lights you will need. What information do you need to better estimate the number of feet of lights that you…
Do I have enough wrapping paper?
I have to wrap this box. In this problem based activity students first guess and then try to calculate whether they will have enough paper to wrap this present without taping pieces of wrapping paper together. …with…
Hands of “Support”
Lorenzo Quinn, an Italian sculptor, created and temporarily installed this piece of art entitled “Support” in Venice. Quinn used his own children’s hands to design this piece. His intention was to demonstrate our need of human support to ensure the…
BIG Snickers bar
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…
How many times bigger?
Listen to students initial thoughts as they wrestle through what “bigger” means … length? height? wheel-base? volume?
How many cars are there?
I came home from work to find that my son had his cars organized in a tight parking lot on our front porch. How many cars are there? Is it an array and if so, what size array could it be…
Have a heart
Clicking on the image above will show the heart larger in a new window. Canstruction® is an event hosted in more than 150 countries throughout the world to demonstrate “innovation, hunger relief and collaboration”. Canstruction has raised more than 40 million…
Giant macaroon nutcracker, revisited
Each year the Boston Ballet highlights the holiday season with the Nutcracker ballet. In 2014, the Boston Ritz Carlton Hotel’s chef, Andrew Yeo and his pastry team, created a gorgeous and massive Nutcracker cake of macaroons and fondant to celebrate the…
Pick-a-brick wall at the Lego store
There are walls at the Lego stores that are filled with individual Lego parts. You can fill a bucket and pick out exactly what you need. Use this PowerPoint activity to get your students conferring with each other, making guesses,…
Big Papi
Check out the video: What do you wonder? How many donuts make up this Big Papi tribute? What would be useful to help you figure this out? The following pictures that will open in new windows: Big Papi Sky View,…
How Many Pennies did Otha Save?
Otha Anders used picking up pennies as a way to remember to pray. In this 3-act activity we try to estimate how much he actually collected and stored in 5 gallon water jugs. Kick off the activity with the article with…