Balanced Assessment
Sales Tax Table
Sales tax rates vary; do the math to find the right rate! Pupils use before tax amounts and after tax amounts to determine the tax rate. Rounding makes the task challenging.
Yummy Math
2015 Macy's Thanksgiving Parade
Take a seat on the parade route with a holiday-themed set of word problems. Young mathematicians answer questions based on the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in New York City, including finding the average number of members in a...
Yummy Math
Really Big Pumpkins
You may think your holiday pumpkins weigh a ton, but in a giant pumpkin contest, they actually do! Middle schoolers read about the winners of the 2014 giant pumpkin contests before solving three word problems involving multiplication and...
Balanced Assessment
Fermi Number
A fermi number is a rough estimate of a quantity that is difficult or impossible to measure. Individuals design a process for making an estimation of a given scenario. For example, they determine a plan for estimating the number of...
Balanced Assessment
Monitor Pricing
Out with the old and in with the new. Learners use a set of prices of computer monitors from 1994 to make a prediction. They then use one current price and what they know about the old prices to make a more recent prediction. Their...
Balanced Assessment
Number Trick
Show your classes the magic of numbers. Using a number trick, learners practice writing algebraic expressions. They then use their expression to perform the trick. Their exploration should help them understand the magic behind the trick.
Balanced Assessment
Marbles in a Glass
Allow learners to design their own strategies to solve a problem. Given dimensions of a glass and a smaller marble, scholars must find the dimensions of a larger marble. The answer key suggests using the Pythagorean Theorem, but multiple...
Balanced Assessment
Star from Square
Quilting is not only beautiful and unique—it is a mathematical art. Show your classes how to design a quilting block while practicing area and circumference of circles. Scholars create a star from a square and then find the circumference...
Balanced Assessment
Frosting on the Cake
Party planners need algebra too! Here, pupils decide the perfect size of a cake based on available ingredients. They use the concepts of area and perimeter to make their conclusions.
Balanced Assessment
Modern Building
Turn your pupils into emerging architects with a resource that asks learners to analyze a scale drawing of a building. They use the scale drawing to interpret the size of the actual building before recreating the drawing using a...
Curated OER
Hot Under The Collar
Pupils try to get a collar on temperature with a short assessment item that asks them to compare two different methods in converting Celsius to Fahrenheit. Individuals try to find out when an estimation provides conversions that are too...
Math Wire
Gingerbread Man Bake Sale
Gingerbread cookies aren't just a sweet treat! Scholars identity the amount of combinations a baker can make in his gingerbread cookies using limited quantities of decorating ingredients.
Los Angeles Valley College
Adding and Subtracting Integers
Practice adding and subtracting positive and negative numbers with a forty-problem integers learning exercise.
Math in English
Thanksgiving MathDoku
Add a festive flare to a game of algebra Sudoku with a Thanksgiving themed math worksheet.
Statistics Education Web
How Wet is the Earth?
Water, water, everywhere? Each pupil first uses an Internet program to select 50 random points on Earth to determine the proportion of its surface covered with water. The class then combines data to determine a more accurate estimate.
Balanced Assessment
Who's Left?
If you're not right-handed, are you wrong-handed? Young statisticians calculate the percentage of left-handed people using a given data set in the assessment task. They plot data on a scatter plot and consider how the line of best fit...
Balanced Assessment
Stick Patterns
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but these sticks will make me smarter. Pupils examine arrays of sticks to determine the next array in a pattern. They use the number of sticks added to each previous array to determine a recursive...
Balanced Assessment
Plenty of Pentagons
Why are only four colors needed to color webs from regular pentagons, not five? An assessment task requires young mathematicians to first construct regular pentagons using a compass and straightedge, then has them consider a shape formed...
Balanced Assessment
Produce Stand
Interpret a graph of the number of oranges at a produce stand to determine a likely event at different times. They also analyze the graph to determine which time period oranges were selling most quickly.
Balanced Assessment
How Big is Big?
Now you can create your own monster movie. Learners estimate the size of a scale model monster given comparison statements and analyze these estimates to determine if the scale model accurately portrays a lizard.
West Contra Costa Unified School District
Work Problems – Bar Models
Why do we have to do so much work? Scholars learn how to set up bar models to represent a situation involving work. They use these bar models to help set up equations with rational coefficients to solve the problem situation.
West Contra Costa Unified School District
Solving Rational Equations
Scholars first learn to solve two-step equations with fractional coefficients and constants by traditional methods and by clearing the denominator. They continue by learning another approach to solve two-step equations that have decimal...
Statistics Education Web
Population Parameter with M-and-M's
Manufacturers' claims may or may not be accurate, so proceed with caution. Here pupils use statistics to investigate the M&M's company's claim about the percentage of each color of candy in their packaging. Through the activity,...
Statistics Education Web
What Percent of the Continental US is Within One Mile of a Road?
There are places in the US where a road cannot be found for miles! The instructional activity asks learners to use random longitude and latitude coordinates within the US to collect data. They then determine the sample proportion and...