Two activities to help celebrate National Donut Day
How many donuts is that = huge box of donuts to approximate.
How have donuts changed = torus volume measurements, formula intuition, and algebraic transformation of one formula into a second formula.
This activity is a investigation intended to get students and teachers to loosen up a little and appreciate how just considering a situation might lead you to a very reasonable approximation.
Too often students think that there is only one answer that is right and that the method for approaching that solution is also limited to the “correct” approach. Surely this fear of experimenting and guessing leads to math anxieties and the fear to reason and experiment.
Clock math, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,1,2,3,4,5,6,7… is modular math. Let your students learn about the usefulness of modular math as they color and explore Pascal’s Triangle. Very pretty math!
Totally new activity! Let your students talk about their favorite Girl Scout cookies as they figure out what the local GS chapter really earns from these sales. Use this old graphic (where a box only costs $4.00) to figure out…
3 activities about wrapping presents: On the diagonal, 3-act by estimation with iPhone, and judging sizes and needs by estimation with man and shopping basket.
The Rise of Skywalker will open on December 20, 2019. How much did it cost to make? How much will it gross? Is the Star Wars phenomena a guarantee for success? How would you compare these movies? We’ve been gathering data…
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…
In this 3-act activity, students look for a pattern to count these cans. Canstruction is an annual event that takes place just before Thanksgiving in cities throughout the world to raise money and gather food for local food banks.
As the Halloween season begins, let your students play a spooky game. How does this work? Students can play this game online at Ghost Whisperer Crystal Ball and then Figure out why it works. Construct viable arguments Critique the work of others…
Students consider how to determine the best candy haul prediction. The math ideas of measurement error and percent error are introduced. Students then predict their own Halloween candy collections numbers and compare their predictions to their actual haul using measurement and percent error.
Monday, September 23, 2019 at 7:50 UTC (which is the same as 3:50 am EST), will be the Autumnal Equinox. It is the time of year when the imaginary plane that passes through the Earth’s Equator would also travel through the…
Updated! Why should students do well in school, graduate high school, or go on to college? In this activity median earnings by various education levels are explored. Students compare the earnings of a non-high school grad with workers who graduated…
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…
We are nearing the finale of this year’s March Madness tournament. Which NCAA teams must have the best basketball programs since they consistently do well in this tournament? Based on this data, which do you think is the greatest March…
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.
