Concord Consortium
Flying High
Some planes are just more efficient than others. Young mathematicians use data on the number of seats, airborne speed, flight length, fuel consumption, and operating cost for airplanes to analyze their efficiency. They select and use...
Concord Consortium
Divisions
Divide and conquer the geometry problem. Young scholars consider how to subdivide triangles into smaller ones that have equal areas. They must apply their knowledge of medians to help accomplish the task.
American Statistical Association
How Long is 30 Seconds?
Is time on your side? Pupils come up with an experiment to test whether their classmates can guess how long it takes for 30 seconds to elapse. They divide the class data into two groups, create box-and-whisker plots, and analyze the...
Mascil Project
Circular Pave-Stones Backyard
Pack the activity into your plans. Young mathematicians learn about packing and optimization with the context of circular paving stones. They use coins to model the paving stones, and then apply knowledge of circles and polygons to...
Concord Consortium
Last Digit Arithmetic
Mathematics involves a study of patterns. The exploratory lesson has learners consider the addition pattern in different sets of numbers. Each set has a different pattern that pupils describe mathematically. The patterns involve both...
Concord Consortium
Intersections II
How many intersections can two absolute value functions have? Young scholars consider the question and then develop a set of rules that describe the number of solutions a given system will have. Using the parent function and the standard...
Concord Consortium
Integer Solutions
Experiment with integer relationships. Young scholars consider integers that have a sum of 10. They begin with two integers, then three, four, and more. As they consider each situation, they discover patterns in the possible solutions.
Scholastic
Organization Outline
Forming a strong organizational outline is important when reading a complex text, writing an informative essay, or analyzing a complicated problem. Use a straightforward organization outline to teach learners about concept mapping.
Concord Consortium
Hockey Pucks
Package design is a mathematical task for any business. Young scholars use a package design to determine the number of packages required for specific shipments. Using ratios, proportions, and fractions, they make decisions about the best...
Concord Consortium
Bricks for Books
Maximize a profit with an understanding of geometric dimension. A real-world task challenges learners to design a pattern using three different brick shapes. The bricks are dedicated with a different donation for each shape, so part of...
Concord Consortium
Circling Trains
And round and round the park we go! Given a description of an amusement park with the locations of three attractions connected by walkways, learners consider what happens when additional attractions join the mix by doubling the length of...
Concord Consortium
Center of Population
Let the resource take center stage in a lesson on population density. Scholars use provided historical data on the center of the US population to see how it shifted over time. They plot the data on a spreadsheet to look the speed of its...
Concord Consortium
The Bus Route
Patterns are extremely helpful when solving a puzzle. Young scholars attempt to find times a bus will pass each stop. They identify a pattern in the known stop times to identify the solutions.
Concord Consortium
Summertopia
What if the unit of money changes tomorrow? Would you be prepared? Learners calculate currency conversions using fictional units of money. The fictional unit's base is 60 rather than 100, which can connect to time or even degrees.
Concord Consortium
Stocking the Shelves
How many ways can you stock a shelf? It's probably more than you think! Young scholars use data in a frequency table to determine how many ways to stock a shelf given a specific constraint for types of groups. They then repeat the task...
Concord Consortium
Sum and Product
From linear to quadratic with a simple operation. An exploratory lesson challenges learners to find two linear functions that, when multiplied, produce a given parabola. The task includes the graph of the sum of the functions as well as...
Concord Consortium
Heights and Weights
Height is dependent on weight—or is it the other way around? Given data from a physicians handbook, individuals compare the height and weight of males and females at different areas. They calculate differences and ratios to assist with...
Concord Consortium
Gestation and Longevity
Is the gestation length of an animal a predictor of the average life expectancy of that animal? Learners analyze similar data for more than 50 different animals. They choose a data display and draw conclusions from their graphs.
Concord Consortium
Function Project
What if a coordinate plane becomes a slope-intercept plane? What does the graph of a linear function look like? Learners explore these questions by graphing the y-intercept of a linear equation as a function of its slope. The result is a...
Concord Consortium
Boards IV
Build a connection between algebraic sequences and spreadsheets. Learners examine a specific folding pattern and convert the pattern into a spreadsheet. The goal of the spreadsheet is to produce a sequence of a specific pattern modeled...
Concord Consortium
Boards III
Learn to visualize mathematical patterns as a folded pattern. Beginning with a visual display, the task encourages pupils to view sequences as a folded table. The pattern of the table then becomes a formula in a spreadsheet that...
Concord Consortium
Boards II
Build spreadsheet skills while investigating decimal multiplication. An open-ended task asks learners to edit a spreadsheet to create a multiplication table for decimals. Provided with a specific interval, pupils create formulas that...
Concord Consortium
Crazy Clocks
While a stopped clock is right twice a day, a fast or slow clock confuses people for weeks. Scholars observe a clock running slow and must correct it before observing a clock running fast and working it backward. Finally, a multi-step...
Concord Consortium
Cities and Gas Stations
In Utah, one stretch of highway goes for 106 miles without a single gas station. Where should people build one? Scholars face the dilemma of where to place a new gas station between three cities. They consider distance and proximity to...