California Academy of Science
Greening Your Middle School
Middle schoolers redesign their school to make it more energy efficient, and create a model of their design. Learners get together in groups of 5, and they take on the task of making their school more energy efficient. To do this, they...
Beyond Benign
Build-A-Math
We can't build our dream house yet, but we can definitely build a model. Scholars use floor plans to build models of their dream homes. Cardboard is as good as any material for this purpose.
Beyond Benign
Scale the Wall
How can you fit an entire school on one sheet of paper? You use scale! Scholars measure rooms in the school and, using the correct scale, design a floor plan that includes area calculations with their data.
National Research Center for Career and Technical Education
Hospitality and Tourism 2: Costing
The lesson plan provides a richly detailed narrative and sample problems for teaching or reinforcing how to work with percentages. In particular, your audience will compute the costs per serving of food and simulate setting menu prices...
Virginia Department of Education
Integers: Addition and Subtraction
Young mathematicians construct their own understanding of integers with an inquiry-based math lesson plan. Using colored chips to represent positive and negative numbers, children model a series of addition and subtraction problems as...
Curated OER
Our Solar System - Comparing Planetary Travel Distances
NASA presents a mini-unit on distances in our solar system. It incorporates scientific concepts of gravity, mass, density, and payload while your aspiring astronauts also employ mathematics skills. They calculate speed, they determine...
West Contra Costa Unified School District
Factoring Quadratic Expressions
Factor in different strategies in a lesson for factoring quadratics. Young mathematicians first create tables and area models to factor quadratic trinomials into two binomials by guess and check. Learners then investigate how they can...
Curated OER
Inquiry Unit: Modeling Maximums and Minimums
Young mathematicians explore the maximun area for patio with the added complexity of finding the mimimum cost for construction. First, they maximize the area of a yard given a limited amount of fence and plot width v. area on a scatter...
Illustrative Mathematics
Setting Goals
Setting financial goals is a common occurrence in middle school that your learners can practice using this activity. They will be able to solve for how many hours Seth needs to work to save up for a skateboard, helmet, and trip. The...
Curated OER
Quilting with Middle School Students: Using Proportionality to Develop Quilt Designs
Learners use quilt patterns to illustrate ratios. In this fractions lesson, students color quilt patterns using given fractions and ratios of colors. A finished "quilt" is assembled from the work of the learners. This is an...
Curated OER
Designing "Green" to Save Our Green Planet
Learners design an environmentally friendly home. In this middle school math/science lesson, students watch videos on creating green design. Learners work in collaborative groups to determine what makes a house green and to design a...
Curated OER
Central Valley Math Project
Middle schoolers study the Pythagorean Theorem. They describe what it means to square a number. Pupilsuse the Pythagorean Theorem to prove the sides of given triangles, and use geometric pieces of paper to create a right triangle and...
Alabama Learning Exchange
Probability with Tree Diagrams
Middle school math whizzes view a PowerPoint tutorial on tree diagrams. Using "Anthonio's Pizza Palace," an interactive activity involving the selection of pizza toppings, they use Pascal's triangle as a tree diagram. This is an engaging...
Curated OER
Coordinate Plane Transformations
Geometric transformations are explored by high schoolers. They will create a set of instructions for plotting coordinates representing an original transformation of a real-world figure. These instructions are shared with middle...
Curated OER
Wildlife Burrows
Burrowing animals are busy! Get your middle school ecologists busy as well by having them create a scale model of a burrowing population. They also design a PowerPoint or poster to explain their models.
Curated OER
Absolute Value and Basic Operations With Real Numbers
Middle schoolers investigate the mathematical concept of absolute value by counting the number of steps taken in two directions. Using the number line the teacher can note how they can forward and backward without changing the absolute...
Illustrative Mathematics
Quinoa Pasta 1
Here is a great opportunity to introduce your mathematicians to a food they may never have heard of, quinoa. It may help to show a short video on quinoa, or make some quinoa for the class to try. Once they get over how to say quinoa,...
National Research Center for Career and Technical Education
Finance: Depreciation (Double Declining)
Of particular interest to a group of business and finance pupils, this activity explores depreciation of automobile values by comparing the double declining balance to the straight line method. Mostly this is done through a slide...
Curated OER
Set Design
Students explore proportional reasoning. In this middle school mathematics lesson plan students investigate scale drawings as they create a proportional representation for the carvings on Mt. Rushmore.
Curated OER
da Vinci: Body Proportion Theories
Middle schoolers investigate the validity of da Vinci's proportion theory by recording human measurements on scatter plots. In groups of three, they record each other's height and wingspan to create a Powerpoint presentation, chart, or...
Oklahoma State University
Hairy Heredity
Young scholars learn that heredity comes down to the flip of a coin with this cross-curricular math and science lesson. Using smiley faces as a model, students toss coins to determine which dominant or recessive traits will be passed on...
Voyage Solar System
Round and Round We Go — Exploring Orbits in the Solar System
Math and science come together in this cross-curricular astronomy lesson plan on planetary motion. Starting off with a hands-on activity that engages the class in exploring the geometry of circles and ellipses, this lesson plan then...
Curated OER
Playing Math Fever
Pupils complete activities to learn notation and uses for positive and negative numbers. For this number system lesson, learners play a game similar to Jeopardy to learn how to solve problems with positive and negative numbers.
Ohio Department of Education
Writing and Comparing Numbers in Scientific Notation-Grade Eight
Explore scientific notation in this mathematics lesson. Young mathematicians explore multiple representations of large number in scientific notation through the use of models, visual representation and expanded form. The lesson provided...