Illustrative Mathematics
Running on the Football Field
Make your class into Pythagorean theorem fanatics in no time. What a great resource to get your sports enthusiasts into the math game! Read the commentary so you can you can strategize how to apply the three math practices.
Curated OER
Peer Pressure
Sixth graders estimate, calculate and collaborate with students. They practice refusal skills.
Curated OER
Courts and Bounds
Students relate what they know about boundaries on sports courts to explore range of space. In this domain and range lesson, students identify numbers needed to calculate ranges and use the problem solving strategy of making a table.
Curated OER
Catch, Tag, and Release
Learners discover how fish tagging is used by marine biologists and fisheries to estimate fish populations. Participating in a simulation, students use estimation to determine the whole population from a small number of items.
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Read That Label!
Students explore reading nutritional labels and making good food choices through simulation. They prepare and design a label for a product. In addition, they create packaging and advertising to ensure access to the population.
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Weather Words
Students brainstorm and define five terms for precipitation, discuss reasons why English language includes various terms for wet weather, and create word games such as jumbles, word searches, or crossword puzzles with weather terms.
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Peer Pressure
Sixth graders make estimations, calculations, and to collaborate with other students to solve a problem. It also teaches valuable refusal skills to combat negative peer pressure and provides students an opportunity to role play. ...
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Understanding Portion Sizes
Students analyze portion sizes in a healthy diet. In this portion sizes lesson, students complete a food group choices worksheet and identify the correct portion of food. Students work in groups to teach the unit to elementary students....
Michigan Sea Grant
Survival Game
Musical chairs may be a classic game, but Ruffe Musical Chairs is a unique lesson on invasive species! Using the time-honored game, pupils role play the behaviors of the invasive fish called Eurasian ruffe. Learning about this aggressive...
Curated OER
Buying My First Car
Students pretend they are about to buy their first new car. They must do all the calculations necessary to estimate the cost of purchasing the car. They see that the math they learn in school really does have real-life applications.
University of Colorado
The Jovian System: A Scale Model
Jupiter has 67 moons! As the seventh in a series of 22, the exercise shows learners the size and scale of Jupiter and its Galilean moons through a model. They then arrange the model to show how probes orbited and gathered data.
Shodor Education Foundation
Spy Game
Turn students into detectives as they decipher encrypted messages. Introduce your class to modular arithmetic and have a little fun encrypting and decoding secret messages. The activity does not hit many content standards, but would be...
Curated OER
The Business of Credit
Learn about credit ratings and how it plays a role in the function of small businesses. Learners use their knowledge of good and bad credit to role play and determine good credit vs. bad credit in the area of small businesses.
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Invest In Yourself
Young scholars learn about budgeting, saving, dept, financial management, opportunity cost, and self-regulation. In this financial management lesson plan, students apply their knowledge of finance components and create their own web...
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The Business of Interest
Students learn about finance and money management and use math to solve problems, communicate, and explore real life situations as they deal with banks. In this financial management lesson, students apply their math skills to real life...
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Balloons: Math with the Montgolfier Balloon
Students discover the history of hot air balloons by watching one ascent. In this physics lesson plan, students utilize a Montgolfier Hot Air Balloon from an earlier lesson plan and record the temperature, rate of ascent and the volume....
Curated OER
PAY CREDIT WHEN CREDIT IS DUE
Students learn about credit cards and scores and how to and not to use them. In this financial concept lesson, students are given hypothetical scenarios where they are able to apply learning's to given situations as they figure rates,...
American Statistical Association
What is the Probability of “Pigging Out”
Learners apply their understanding of luck to a probability experiment. They play a game of Pass the Pigs to determine the probability of a specific outcome. Using analysis for their data, pupils declare the measures of center, dot...
Curated OER
How Big Is a Blue?
Students sort and compare/contrast the lengths of various whales. They sort pictures of whales in order of smallest to largest, and given a rope marked with the lengths of the whales, they compare the actual lengths of the whales.
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CATCH, TAG and RELEASE
Pupils apply estimation strategies for problem-solving purposes. They become familiar with one aspect of a marine biologist's work.
Curated OER
What Do We Do With A Dirty Bomb?
Students examine composition of dirty bomb and its possible effects on a city, and investigate simulations of such an event; students use computational and problem solving skills to assess damage and prepare report proposing solution to...
Curated OER
Water Conservation
Students explore types of water reserves. In this water conservation activity, students brainstorm ways water are used in their homes. Students use a graduated cylinder to simulate the amount of water on Earth and the amount that humans...
Curated OER
Hibernating Hoopla
Students simulate hibernation with their stuffed animals. They predict the length of time of hibernation and type their math journal entries about sorting, graphing and draw pictures. They read bear hibernation stories.
Curated OER
More Bait for Your Buck!
Students determine where to buy the heaviest earthworms as they study invertebrates. They create a double bar graph of the results of the weight data.