Data on the National Mall sites – Two data analysis activities about the National Mall. Who do we honor? – What people or events are included in the National Mall monuments? Students use fractions or percents to decide what they can notice…
Tag: HS
Two 12s or one 18?
Which should we order and why? Two 12-inch pizzas or one 18-inch pizza? Which will give you more pizza? More crust? Which is the better deal? Let’s do the math! The activity: more-pizza.pdf
Checking in on LeBron
Now the that season is underway let’s check in on how Cleveland and the Lakers are doing since LeBron changed teams. LeBron is arguably the best player in the NBA and a tremendous addition to a team … a real…
Huge diamond found in Canada
552-carat diamond found in Diavik Mine, Northwest Territories, Canada Can you tell just how big this gem is? Do you know how big a carat is? What would this look like on a ring on your finger?
New Horizons spacecraft just flew by a really distant asteroid
On January 1st, 2019, the New Horizons spacecraft passed close to Ultima Thule, a Kuiper Belt object that’s a billion miles beyond Pluto. That milestone marked the most distant celestial object that we have ever been able to see close-up. In this activity student do some rate conversions to try to understand the delay in knowing that the mission was a success.
Times Square Ball Drop
Share the data in your class and ask what the numbers make your students wonder and what they can observe from the information. Happy New Year!
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…
Wrapping presents on the diagonal
In this activity students determine if this method for minimizing wrapping paper is actually more efficient then the traditional method. For a hands on learning experiment, have students actually wrap a small rectangular prism using any available paper in both the traditional and diagonal methods. Then let them compare the two quantities of wrapping paper and decide which method uses less paper and by what percent.
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…
Leaves are pretty but …
Brian has spent too much time thinking about his leaf raking. He’s worried about doing the job alone and about how long the job would take with different numbers of rakers. In this activity students see the inverse relationship between…
Egad! It’s already time for Hanukkah
Sunday evening, December 2nd, is the first night of Hanukkah this year. I think it was much later in December last year. Why isn’t it always on the same date? Students look at the Hebrew calendar and appreciate the incredible…
Thanksgiving, football, Black Friday, and giving
Not enough mashed potatoes – Use Brian’s famous mashed potatoes recipe to practice changing decimals to fractions; calculating ingredient measure for various-sized Thanksgiving gatherings; have students explain their reasoning; and to have students figure out how many servings 7½ pounds of…
Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade 2018
As we get ready for next week’s holiday, students can study a map of the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, describe, measure and hypothesize why this route was chosen and then calculate how long each band will be marching and…
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…
Consumer spending 2018
Consumers in the U.S. spend a lot of money. In this activity we look at historical data to see if there are any patterns in our spending. How does our holiday spending show up in these graphs? What accounts for…