I wanted to engage my students in some mathematical thinking activities involving measurement. I have a book called "Calculator Activities: Measurement" that allows the students to think about math in a real-world, kid relevant way (I mean.... roller coasters!). They also love that they get to use calculators!
The activity I have chosen for them to work through first is based on going to an amusement park. In the activity "Atop the Drop Kick Coaster," the students are solving the problem:
How could we figure out the best combinations of
rides from our day at the amusement park?
This project will take a few days, so we began by discovering how many hours they have to spend in the park. Next, we learned how to determine the number of minutes we would need to spend either in line or riding each coaster. Finally, we were only able to BEGIN working on creating two different plans detailing how we could spend our time in the park (including potty and lunch breaks).
The classes are working as table groups and allowed to use calculators to complete the problems, however, each student is required to turn in their own answers to the problems presented.
The class was noisy, but the talk was focused on solving problems that have real meaning to my classes. Who knew...
HOMEWORK: Countdown 4.5
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