Ooooo. Scary! This is a slightly didactic activity on vampire bats. We’ve given lots of interesting metric and customary unit facts and asked students to relate those sizes to more familiar objects. Simply enjoy the season with this slightly creepy activity…
Jodie Berman, a high school math teacher in Chicago, loves mathematics and loves to cook. We’ve created an activity based on her Monster Cake (composed of everything that Cookie Monster loves). This recipe is published in her blog, Binomial Baker, First,…
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…
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…
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…
No joke. Saturday was National S’more Day. Thanks to Maggie Hefferman, Newton, MA educator, for the idea of this post. To help you celebrate this strange new holiday, we’ve asked students to do a little math to help quantify…
If you have a set of cubes for your classroom, this would make a great group hands-on project. Its an old puzzle but the activity deserves a revisit. Below are two straight-on images of my stack of blocks. Can you…
After chlorination, it has been hard to measure the quantity of pollutants in pool water. A Canadian chemist, Xing-Fang Li, has found a marker for urine that chlorine doesn’t disguise. In this activity, students calculate volume of several pools, change that…
Revised! We’re watching another Stanley Cup playoff now. Will there be any really long games during the playoffs? In 2013, a Stanley Cup playoff match between the Bruins and Blackhawks went into 3 overtimes. People stayed up way too late…
Mother’s Day by the numbers – Mother’s Day is right around the corner and this means big business for the greeting card and floral industries. Let your students practice averages, percents, and large numbers while they analyze the statistics on Mother’s…
My dog, Jorge, has just turned 14 years old. He still seems like a puppy to me but I wonder how old he is when compared to a human’s age. He’s definitely not like an 98-year old human (14 years…
Monday, 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…
This day is known for pranks and puzzles. Try one of these on April Fools Day. Ask students to analyze where I made my mistake. PerplexingProblem.pdf For members we have solutions. PerplexingProblem-solution.pdf CCSS: MP1,…
More for π Day! On a cold and snowy day in Boston, two chefs created a huge Key Lime pie to remind the frozen people of the Northeast how tasty and warm the Keys of Florida are. After you…
Shamrocks in Ireland are actually be 3-leafed white clover, trifolium repens. If you are lucky, you can sometimes find a four-leafed clover. How rare is finding a 4-leafed clover? How hard do you have to look? What size area of clover must you examine to find one? + 2 more Saint Patrick’s Day activities
