Here’s a great way to give students practice adding coins. Use the date as their target number and then have them come up with all the different combinations using pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. To turn this into a problem-solving activity, ask them to prove that they found all the combinations. A good way for students to learn how to organize their work is to have them use a table. At first, most kids fill in the table haphzardly which…
This is a fun lesson I do with sixth graders where students redesign the soda can. After reviewing volume of rectangular prisms, students determine the volume of a can of soda in cubic inches. They use this volume to re-design the soda can so that their can has the same volume. Students will need to use the area of polygons such as rectangles, triangles, parallelograms, and trapezoids in the design of their new can. They begin by creating a net…
This is a fun project I do with fifth graders where students take on the role of Senior Designer at Packagings R Us. They will need to design the perfect box (rectangular prism) for an item that they will be bringing in. Their box will be “shipped” to Australia so they will need to consider the fragility of their item when designing the box and determine appropriate packing material. An extension is to have students do a cost analysis for…
What a great group of volunteers! These are the station facilitators and family math night coordinator for one of our latest Math Medley Family Math Night events. By the way, notice how two of them are students…one middle school and the other high school. I like how most of them are wearing the school spirit t-shirt. It’s a great way to show support of the school but it’s also a great way for participants to know who is the station…
Meaningful math with a purpose! This great hands-on lesson gets students doing math while designing targets. Students become comfortable using the area formula for circles. And the best part is, their targets are set up and used during the school’s fall carnival. Watch the video below for the entire lesson plan. CCSS: 7.G.4 TEKS: 6th grade 6C, 8A, 8B Link to video. .