If you try to predict how the games will play out by filling out a bracket, what are your chances of picking every game? How does the change from 64 to 65 to now, 68 teams in the field complicate things? How many brackets would you need to fill out to pick every possibility?
Engage your students in percents as they get excited about March Madness. Is getting a higher seed really an advantage? Use 30 years of data to help determine for which seeds it makes sense to pick an upset.
The Iditarod Dogsled Race will begin this year on Saturday, March 4th 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 if…
On February 6th, Turkey and Syria were hit with a powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake. What does a 7.8 magnitude earthquake imply? What’s a seismometer? What is the amplitude of a seismograph and what does it mean? Use our Richter scale activity to introduce your students to logarithmic Richter magnitudes.
Recently the Mega millions’ jackpot was won in Maine at 1.35 billion dollars. Last year, someone won 2.04 billion dollars in Powerball. Students examine compound probability and decide whether playing Powerball or Mega millions is worth it.
Huge sports contracts! We often hear about big player contracts. Who makes the most per year? Per game? What sports?
How is the amount of darkness now related to your location on Earth? Understanding the Winter Solstice. 7.G.3, HSG.C, HSG.GMD.4, HSG.MG.1
Students use the National Weather Service’s chart to look for patterns, make predictions, decide how many ways the wind-chill could be -22 degrees F, and compare the formula’s outcome with their chart predications.
In 1980, a gallon of gas costs $1.22. Today’s prices are a lot higher. Is that because the price has gone up or because in 1980 you could buy a lot more with $1.22 than you can buy today?
Students analyze the ratios and percents of population, participation, and money spent in honor of October 31st. This activity takes kids through finding parts of wholes as well as ratio, percents and proportion problems.
What is this holiday about? Are we celebrating the start of school? New cars? The end of summer? In this short activity, students learn about the intended meaning of Labor Day as they read about its origin. For the mathematical…
In this fraction operation and representation activity, students are asked to decide how much of my cake was eaten. Using fraction multiplication (or angle measure if that is where you need an activity) they find out how much someone owes…
In this activity students decide what equipment and supplies are necessary, estimate how much that will all cost, confer with classmates to refine their lists, and then research to find out more accurately how much it will probably cost to send them back to school. This activity could be used for students in upper elementary school all the way to high school. It offers an opportunity for kids to estimate, research, reason, calculate and communicate with each other.
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 cubic foot volume to gallons of pool water, and try to approximate how much urine is in each pool.
