The purpose of this task is to address the concept of opportunity cost through a real world context involving money.
Playing the role of engineers in collaborations with the marketing and production teams in a chocolate factory, students design a container for a jumbo chocolate bar. The projects constraints mean the container has to be a regular trapezoidal prism. The design has to optimize the material used to construct the container; that is, students have to find the dimensions of the container with the maximum volume possible. After students come up with their design, teams present a final version of the product that includes creative branding and presentation. The problem-solving portion of this project requires students to find a mathematical process to express the multiple variables in the prism’s volume formula as a single variable cubic polynomial function. Students then use technology to determine the value for which this function has a maximum and, with this value, find the prism’s optimal dimensions.
The goal of this task is to help students understand the commutative property of addition by examining the addition facts for single digit numbers. This is important as it gives students a chance, at a young age, to do more than memorize these arithmetic facts which they will use throughout their education.
This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach second graders an overview of before and after (time).
This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach third graders an overview of before and after (time).
This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach fourth graders about telling the time - before and after.
These word problems about money require students to think in base 10.
The purpose of this task is to help students understand composing and decomposing ones, tens, and hundreds. This task is meant to be used in an instructional setting and would only be appropriate to use if students actually have base-ten blocks on hand.
This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to give fourth graders an overview of time conversion between words and numbers.
This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach third graders an overview of time patterns.
This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach second graders an overview of time patterns.
This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to give fourth graders an overview of telling time to quarter and hour.
This series of word problems requires students to determine which problems can be solved by multiplying 1/8_2/5.
This task presents an incomplete problem and asks students to choose numbers to subtract (subtrahends) so that the resulting problem requires different types of regrouping. This way students have to recognize the pattern and not just follow a memorized algorithm--in other words, they have to think about what happens in the subtraction process when we regroup. This task is appropriate to use after students have learned the standard US algorithm.
This instructional task requires students to add four numbers to find the solution.
Students overlay USGS topographic maps into Google Earth’s satellite imagery. By analyzing Denali, a mountain in Alaska, they discover how to use map scales as ratios to navigate maps, and use rates to make sense of contour lines and elevation changes in an integrated GIS software program. Students also problem solve to find potential pathways up a mountain by calculating gradients.
This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach fourth graders about number riddles (numbers up to 100,000).
This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach fifth graders about turning numbers into words within word problems.
This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach third graders about turning words into numbers using place value models.
Both of the questions in this task are solved by the division problem 12Ö3 but what happens to the ribbon is different in each case.