How long would it take to break into a safe by testing every possible combination of codes? Pupils view a video clip of this happening and must determine the total amount of time before success. They measure how long each step takes, add...

Do women with college degrees get married later? Using a provided scatter plot of the percentage of women who earn bachelor's degrees and the median age at which women first get married over time, pupils conduct a linear regression...

Does your coffee get too cold too fast? Joulies just might be your answer! Learners use experimental data to make a conclusion about how effective Joulies are at keeping coffee at the ideal temperature. A video shows the graph of the...

Keep the planes from crashing. Pupils work with three airplanes and change their flight paths to keep them at a safe distance from each other. Individuals work through three problems in the third interactive in a set of six with...

Time is growing short. Teams work together to identify physical properties of rocks in order to determine the properties that would best suit their cavern shelter design.

Do homework grades really determine test scores? Learn whether lines of best fit, correlation coefficients, and residuals can be used to determine test scores when given homework grades. (It would certainly save teachers time in grading...

Here is a well-designed resource that provides five yes-or-no questions which model different situations with linear functions. It makes a good pre-test for the beginning of the unit. The purpose is to elicit common misconceptions of...

One of the hardest skills for many young geometers to grasp is to move beyond just declaring obvious things true, and really returning to fundamental principles for proof. This brief exercise stretches those proving muscles as the...

Gotta catch them all—no learner left behind! Young scholars must predict the length of time it takes a phone attached to a fan to travel five kilometers given the radius and rotations versus time data. Why would you attach a phone to a...

Get three planes to line up safely. Individuals work through a set of problems to eliminate spacing conflicts between three airplanes in flight. The pupils use their knowledge to change the airplanes' speed or route to meet a...

Do pilots create appropriate spacing between aircraft by traveling a longer or shorter path? An interactive presents two airplanes that violate safety protocols. Pupils must determine how to change the path of one plane to create...

Potty humor is always a big hit with the school-age crowd, and potty algebra takes this topic to a whole new level. Here the class develops a model that connects the dimensions (radii, paper thickness, and length of paper) of a...

Elapsed time is a skill developed by the single question that is the center of this activity. Fifth graders are asked to find out the time that is 2011 minutes after the beginning of 2011. This question addresses the standard that...

When is the last time you assigned your students only one problem? This seemly simple problem requires learners think like a mathematician and reason about how to solve this compound inequality in one variable. More than just using...

Boxing takes on a whole new meaning! The second installment of the three-part series has groups create lidless boxes from construction paper that can hold the most rice. After testing out their constructions, they build a new box....

Assess whether your kindergartners can identify numbers in random order using two sets of numeral cards 1-10 and 11-20. Starting with a small group and the 1-10 deck give your learners the task of putting the cards into order from...

Put those thinking hats on and look at all the possible outcomes from rolling two different four-sided dice. The challenge in this problem is finding all the combinations when adding and subtracting the numbers from each die and creating...

Dressing for success is not always about looking sharp. Sometimes it is about staying warm and dry. Present your class with an activity that challenges groups of pupils to design a layered material for blizzard conditions. The teams test...

Provide a Hooke for a lesson on elasticity with an activity that has groups investigate a set of springs. They use a set procedure to collect data to calculate the spring constant for each spring using Hooke's Law. The groups...

Challenge your class to use their understanding of the engineering design process to design and build a small-scale, off-road prototype for an assistive technology device. Teams select materials to build their scale models, and, using...

Do flexible circuits change dimensions during fabrication? Groups use GeoGebra software to measure the length of pictures of flexible nano-circuits. To determine if the circuits change dimensions, future engineers use Microsoft...

Engineering design projects serve as great opportunities for collaborative problem solving. In this case, students work in small groups designing, building, and eventually testing a structure that meets a teacher-specified objective. It...

When a random sample isn't enough, your math class can compare the data from a physical simulation to decide if the probability is still likely. The lesson is part of a probability series that focuses on one question and different ways...

What happens when your teachers get tired of grading tests and want to use games of chance to determine your grade? How would you decide which game they should play? Learn how to use expected value and standard notation to compare two...