Illinois Valley Community College
STEM Activities for Middle School Students
Use STEM activities within the class to provide connections to concepts. The resource includes activities that range from working with buoyancy to building rockets and launching them. Other activities involve the engineering design...
Balanced Assessment
Boring a Bead
How much material is in a bead? Class members utilize volume formulas to determine the amount of material in a bead. The goal of the assessment is to show that the amount of material left in a bead is the same for all beads with a...
Noyce Foundation
Building Blocks
Building blocks have more uses than simply entertaining children. Young mathematicians calculate the volume of a given cube, and then calculate the volume and surface area of a prism formed from multiple cubes.
Bowland
Torbury Festival
Have you been to Torbury Fair? In the set of four lessons, learners solve a myriad of problems related to a music festival, including situations involving floods, market stalls, cows, and emergency plans.
Bowland
Mission: Rainforest
Young environmentally conscious mathematicians solve a variety of problems related to the central theme of uncovering illegal logging activities. They determine a base camp based on given constraints, investigate logging activities and...
Bowland
AstroZoo
Rescue animals in the zoo by applying math concepts. Groups of learners solve three missions involving oxygen, food, and climate control. Each group selects an animal from one of four bio-domes.
University of Chicago
Don't Be Too Flaky
Snow, ice, and water are all composed of H2O. Does that mean they all have the same volume? Discover the ways that the densities of these substances determine their volumes, and how they change based on their current states of...
Inside Mathematics
Swimming Pool
Swimming is more fun with quantities. The short assessment task encompasses finding the volume of a trapezoidal prism using an understanding of quantities. Individuals make a connection to the rate of which the pool is filled with a...
Teach Engineering
Rock and Boat
Present the class with a question on whether the water level of a pond will rise they take a large rock out of a boat and drop it into the pond. Groups come down on all sides of the question and try to justify their answers. The activity...
Teach Engineering
Above-Ground Storage Tanks in the Houston Ship Channel
Introduce your class to storage tank failures caused by major storms with an activity that looks at how the concepts of Archimedes' Principle and Pascal's Law affect the storage tanks along the Houston Ship Channel. The background...
Teach Engineering
How Big? Necessary Area and Volume for Shelter
Teams must determine the size of cavern needed to house the citizens of Alabraska to protect them from the asteroid impact. Using scaling properties, teams first determining the number of people that could sleep in a classroom and then...
Teach Engineering
Cartesian Diver
Amaze your scholars with an activity that uses a Cartesian diver to demonstrate Pascal's Law, Archimedes' Principle, and the Ideal Gas Law. Groups then repeat the process and make their own diver move up and down in a bottle.
Mathematics Assessment Project
Estimating Volume: The Money Munchers
Don't stuff money under your mattress. To find out why learners first complete a task determining how $24,000 in cash would affect the height of a mattress and whether this same amount would fit into a suitcase of given dimensions....
Mathematics Assessment Project
Matchsticks
How many matchsticks can be made from a single tree? That is the problem facing middle schoolers. Scholars first determine the volume of a matchstick given its dimensions, and then use this information to estimate the number of...
Mathematics Assessment Project
Evaluating Statements About Enlargements
Double, toil ,and double linear dimensions. Learners first complete an assessment investigating how doubling linear dimensions affects the area of pizzas and the volume of popcorn containers. They then complete an activity investigating...
Mathematics Assessment Project
Calculating Volumes of Compound Objects
After determining the volume of various drinking glasses , class members evaluate sample responses to the same task to identify errors in reasoning.
Mathematics Assessment Project
Modeling: Making Matchsticks
Math: The only subject where the solution to a problem is seven million matches. Young scholars first complete an assessment task estimating the number of matches they can make from a tree of given dimensions. They then evaluate provided...
Teach Engineering
Density Column Lab - Part 2
Groups suspend objects within layers of liquids to determine the densities of different liquids and compare them to the densities of objects calculated in Part 1. The groups then carefully test their calculations by layering the...
Teach Engineering
Density Column Lab - Part 1
Mass and density — aren't they the same thing? This activity has groups use balance beams and water displacement to measure several objects. The pupils use the measurements to calculate the density of the objects.
EngageNY
Mid-Module Assessment Task - Algebra 2 (Module 1)
Challenge classes to think deeply and apply their understanding of polynomials. The assessment prompts learners to use polynomial functions to model different situations and use them to make predictions and conclusions.
EngageNY
Modeling with Polynomials—An Introduction (part 1)
Maximizing resources is essential to productivity. Class members complete an activity to show how math can help in the process. Using a piece of construction paper, learners construct a box with the maximum volume. Ultimately, they...
Mathematics Assessment Project
Funsize Cans
Designing fun-size cans ... what fun! Class members use the provided questions to determine the dimensions of a can with a minimum surface area for a given volume. The task allows learners to use graphs or algebraic manipulation to...
Mathematics Assessment Project
Propane Tanks
As an assessment task, learners must determine the radius of a new tank that has double the capacity of a given tank. Task tests knowledge of determining volumes of cylinders and spheres.
Mathematics Assessment Project
Bestsize Cans
Traditional calculus problem made simple. In the high school assessment task, learners determine the minimum surface area for a can of a given volume using algebraic and numerical methods to solve the problem. No calculus...