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Numbers and Me

Pre-K-2

In this lesson, students participate in activities in which they focus on the uses of numbers. The activities explore how students use numbers in school and every day settings as a way for students and the teacher to get to know each other at the beginning of the school year.

Collecting The Rays

3-5

In this lesson, students explore how variations in solar collectors affect the energy absorbed. They make rectangular prisms that have the same volume but different linear dimensions. Students investigate relationships among the linear dimensions, the area, and the volume of rectangular prisms.

What Comes Nex_?

3-5

The following activities deal with patterns and the importance of looking at data from more than a single perspective. Included are explorations designed to encourage open-mindedness and to help students develop alternative viewpoints. Students investigate a series of items that appear to be ordered in some "obvious" ways. Students also explore ways of sorting items into two disjoint groups on the basis of some definable characteristic. This lesson was adapted from "What Comes Nex_?", written by William R. Speer & Daniel J. Brahier. It appeared in the October, 1995 Teaching Children Mathematics Vol. 2, no. 2.

Water, Water

3-5

Students compare the amount of water they use in daily life with the amount allotted for each person each day on a Space Shuttle. Within this context, students estimate and measure the weight of, and amount of space occupied by, a gallon of water. They collect, organize, graph, analyze, and interpret data from their investigations. The activities in this lesson are designed to span 2‑3 class periods.

Two Runners

3-5

In this activity, students use a software simulation of two runners along a track. Students control the speed and starting point of the runners, watch the race, examine the graphs, and analyze the time-versus-distance relationships. This activity helps students understand, describe, and compare situations involving constant rates of change.

Rescue Mission Game

3-5

Students play a game to learn about the four forces of flight: lift, drag, thrust, and weight. Before playing the game, students conduct a probability experiment with spinners and record their results in tally tables and bar graphs. They then use their findings to select spinners with the greatest probability of helping them win the game. In a portion of the game, students use ordered pairs to plot points on the coordinate plane to show their flight path.

This lesson was adapted from Travel in the Solar System in Mission Mathematics II: Grades 3‑5, a NASA/NCTM project, NCTM 1997.

Picture This

3-5

In this lesson, students participate in an activity in which they conduct a survey, analyze and summarize the data they collect, and draw conclusions from their findings. This lesson plan was adapted from the article "Picture This" by Marty Hopkins, which appeared in Teaching Children Mathematics, February 1998, vol. 4, no. 6, pp. 354-59.