Students learn about life-cycle assessment and how engineers use this technique to determine the environmental impact of everyday products and processes. As they examine what’s involved in making and consuming cupcakes, a snack enjoyed by millions of people every year, students learn about the production, use and disposal phases of an object’s life cycle. With the class organized into six teams, students calculate data for each phase of a cupcake’s life cycle—wet ingredients, dry ingredients, baking materials, oven baking, frosting, liner disposal—and calculate energy usage and greenhouse gases emitted from making one cupcake. They use ratios and fractions, and compare options for some of the life-cycle stages, such as different paper wrapper endings (disposal to landfills or composting) in order to make a life-cycle plan with a lower environmental impact. This activity opens students’ eyes to see the energy use in the cradle-to-grave lives of everyday products. Pre/post-quizzes, worksheets, activity cards, Excel® workbook and visual aids are provided.

Students will breed fruit flies through several generations and record their data using mathematical models in order to demonstrate the inheritance of trait variations.

This task is designed to help students focus on the whole that a fraction refers to. It helps students to realize that two different fractions can describe the same situation depending on what you choose to be the whole.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach fifth graders about distance between items.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach fourth graders about distance between items.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach fifth graders about solving multi-step distance problems.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach fourth graders about multi-step money problems.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach third graders about finding the number from the figure patterns.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach fourth graders about multiples - word problems.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach third graders about multiples - word problems.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach third graders about multiplication problems involving grouping of items.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach second graders about multiplication sentences from illustrations (numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10).

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach second graders about multiplication sentences from illustrations II (numbers 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 12).

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach second graders about multiplication stories and illustrations i - word problems.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach third graders about multiplication stories and illustrations II - word problems.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to give fifth graders an overview of decimal word problems.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach fifth graders about multiplying decimals by multiples of 10.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach fifth graders about multiplying two mixed numbers.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach fourth graders about shortening multiplication expressions.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach third graders about multiplying 2 digits by 1 digit.