In December soccer teams with the strongest world rankings were chosen to play in the once-every-4-years World Cup. The World Cup competition has just begun and will continue through July 15th. The team rankings are calculated in a pretty complex…
This activity is the first in our series on mental math tricks. Let your students develop their own individual way of mentally multiplying by 0.5, 5, 50, 500, and so on. We have a little practice and a requirement for…
Warriors won the NBA Championships. Randall won’t have to buy jerseys! The Cleveland Brown’s safety player, Damarious Randall, posted this tweet. Its been very popular and retweeted a lot. How much might he have to fork out for jerseys? Let’s…
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…
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…
The Volcano Kilauea is continuing to spew molten lava and ash on the island of Hawai’i. This volcano is on the tip of the southern most Hawaiian Island. Is that significant? In this activity students note the descending ages of…
In 2017 Russel Westbrook had one of the most dominating seasons ever, averaging a trip!e double per game. James Harden lit up the league in 2018 and is considered the favorite for MVP. Or what about Stephen Curry and his…
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…
Game one of the 2013 Stanley Cup between the Bruins and Blackhawks went into 3 overtimes. People stayed up way too late to watch the conclusion. The teams played 112 minutes and eight seconds of game time. The game went…
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…
In preparation for the Boston Marathon, we thought that an analysis of running speeds might be appropriate.Have you heard of The Six Million Dollar Man? He was the character in a science fiction show about an astronaut that was rebuilt,…
We’ve found that some students believe that the approximation that their calculators show for irrational numbers is exact. Here’s an activity that you can advertise as long multiplication review. After they study our calculations have a discussion just to clarify…
In this activity students decide how to divide 2 pizzas amongst 6 adults and 3 pizzas amongst 8 kids. Fractional pizza parts need to be drawn and considerations discussed about which fractions are greater. Students interpret a fraction as division…
Probably most of us have heard of and even used hexadecimal color codes. Don’t you wonder why their number descriptions really make sense? In this activity we first ask students to color in our Golden Spiral by giving them the…
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…