6-8
A political map of the United States after the 2000 election is largely red, representing the Republican candidate, George W. Bush. However, the presidential race was nearly tied. Using a grid overlay, students estimate the area of the country that voted for the Republican candidate and the area that voted for the Democratic candidate. Students then compare the areas to the electoral and popular vote election results. Ratios of electoral votes to area are used to make generalizations about the population distribution of the United States.
6-8
Students begin by breaking down a typical summer day into a variety of activities and the amount of time they spend on each. They then translate their activity times into a simplified fraction, a decimal, and a percent. Students create a pie chart for this information that is unique to them. Students who struggle with the calculations will have the opportunity to practice these conversions by playing a game that can easily be differentiated for various levels of learners.
6-8
In this activity, students will multiply and divide a recipe to feed groups of various sizes. Students will use unit rates or proportions and think critically about real world applications of a baking problem.
6-8
In this lesson, students will use dimensions of round and square hay bales to calculate and compare volumes. They also calculate unit prices to determine which hay bale is the better value. Finally, students explore how to fit round and square bales into a barn to maximize volume, and decide which type of hale bale is the best choice.
6-8
In this lesson, a string will be stretched across the classroom and various points will be marked for 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4. This classroom number line will be used to show that all proper fractions are grouped between 0 and 1, and that improper fractions or mixed numbers are all grouped above 1. Students clip index cards with various proper fractions, improper fractions, and mixed numbers on the clothesline to visually see groupings. Students then play an estimation game with groups using the same principle. Encouraging students to look at fractions in various ways will help foster their conceptual fraction sense.
6-8
Tile floors are common in many homes and businesses. They are durable, beautiful, and can add value to the home or business but they can also be costly. In this lesson, students will create and estimate the cost of a tile floor design using geometric shapes, ratios, proportions, and percents. All cost estimates are based on the purchase of full boxes of tiles so students have to weigh cost against design considerations. Cost estimates also include labor and taxes for a more realistic estimate of what it costs for a great looking floor.
3-5, 6-8
The rules of Krypto are amazingly simple — combine five numbers using
the standard arithmetic operations to create a target number. Finding a
solution to one of the more than 3 million possible combinations can be
quite a challenge, but students love it. And you’ll love that the game
helps to develop number sense, computational skill, and an
understanding of the order of operations.
6-8
We are bombarded in the media with ads offering 0% interest or teaser rates of 2.9%. These ads are devised to entice us to sign up for these limited time offers that the companies tell us would be crazy to miss. The goal of these ads is to get us to use credit to buy on impulse. If we take the time to analyze the offer, we might realize that if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. In this lesson, students will work through a credit card scenario with a teaser rate, minimum payments, fees, and rate increases for being late.
6-8, 9-12
In this lesson, students purchase the common items used in their mathematics classroom such as desks, chairs, calculators, manipulatives, etc. They are given a budget that they must work within plus coupons that they must use when making their purchases. The lesson lets students have fun while applying the concepts of discount and percent. Since students use a purchase register to track their purchases, it also serves as a review of integer operations.
6-8
In this lesson, students develop a deep conceptual understanding between remainders and the decimal part of quotients. They learn how remainders and group size work together to influence the results that are displayed on a calculator. Students use beans to physically represent quotients that have remainders, and they compare remainders written as fractions of whole groups to the results obtained with a calculator.
