The Iditarod Dog Sled Race will begin this year on Saturday, March 7th in Anchorage, Alaska. It is often called The Last Great Race on Earth because it is so long and grueling. Students do some rate, distance, and hardship comparisons to decide…
Tag: 7.RP.A
How much snow is that?
Start out this activity with: What do you notice? What do you wonder? How many inches of snow produced that pile? How much snow in volume is on top of the car? How much could that snow weigh? Students try to approximate…
How should I cook my turkey?
Bake it, deep fry it or barbecue it? When do I have to wake up to begin preparations? How long will the cooking take? How much will it cost? How many can I feed?
When will he use up his chocolate milk account?
Brian’s son buys chocolate milk every few days to go with his lunch. His school creates an invoice that they send to parents every month that show the status of his milk account. Brian put $20.00 into this account to…
S’mores
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…
Bears Ears revisited
There is some beautiful land in Utah that was changed last year from federally protected land to Utah overseen land. The buttes of Bears Ears (shown above) and the surrounding territory contain over 100,000 archaeological sites and are sacred land…
Louisiana
We recently watched the approach of Hurricane Barry and worried about the fate of Louisiana. After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, what would another powerful hurricane do to this fragile state? What is it about Louisiana that causes so much…
How much pee is in this pool?
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…
How does the pay for women’s soccer compare to that of men’s?
All soccer players on a team aren’t paid the same. The best players are paid more than the simply great players. And in Women’s soccer those same differences exist but at a smaller income scale. In this activity we examine…
Wow, everything must be free!
What happens when you take 50% off again after taking 50% off at first? Students examine this retailer trick of giving double discounts. What happens to the price when you are given a double discount? Could everything be free?
Earth Day – 12 possible activities
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…
How hard is it to find a 4-leaf clover? + more Saint Patrick’s Day activities
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
Value of a lifetime of Whoppers?
Locked in a smelly bathroom for one hour and then promised a lifetime of Whopper meals, an Oregon man sued BK when the manager’s promise was withdrawn. How much money should he ask for in his suit? The activity: BurgerKingBathroomLawsuit.pdf
Fine
TJ Watt was fined for roughing the passer. Check out the tweet from Darren Rovell and engage your students in a familiar context for a classic percent problem – solving for the “whole.” JUST IN: @_TJWatt lost 38% of his…
How huge could this mid-term election be?
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…