Spending Money
In this lesson, students use the Understand, Plan, Solve, and Evaluate (UPSE) problem-solving model to first identify and organize relevant information, and then devise and carry out a plan to solve one-step mathematics word problems with a missing addend. The lesson was designed with English learners (ELs) in mind and includes instructional strategies designed to make linguistic and content input comprehensible: a focus on vocabulary, manipulatives, visuals, cooperative learning, anchor charts, graphic organizers, technology applications, and sentence stems/frames.
Got Force?
Students use various surfaces and a weighted car to see how far the car will travel using balanced and unbalanced forces.
Circuit Designers
Students will work in small groups of two to three on a structured challenge around circuits which includes requirements such as including using a switch or a conductor. They will then use that knowledge to work on a collaborative challenge to solve a relevant problem related to elephant poaching. Students will create a containment system that will have an alarm system, a lighting system, and a way to pass through. Finally, they will review the other projects and discuss similarities and differences in the design.
Solving Equations and Inequalities
Students will be divided into four groups and work on their assigned task to become an expert. They will match vocabulary terms with definitions and examples, use the “Pass the Pen” strategy to create and solve equations or inequalities, or write a real-world problem for an equation given. The experts will then teach these concepts to their peers.
Communication in Space
Students will work in cooperative groups to create an accurate arrangement of mirrors that work together to relay a laser beam from a Mars space station to Earth’s Mission Control, which will model utilizing satellites in space for communication, an accommodation necessary for manned space exploration.
Teacher In Action
Comparing Fractional Parts Using Pizza
Students will compare fractional parts in a real-world situation using play dough as a model for pizza.
Student working through task
Courts of Measure
Students will use measurement tools to measure the dimensions of the basketball court and calculate the area of the court.
Perfectly Proportional Percents
Students will collaborate to explain verbally how to solve percent proportions and scaling while showing their thinking.
One-Step Word Problems
Students participate in a teacher-created three-act task in order to solve math word problems. They reactivate their prior knowledge and determine the question to solve the main problem during Act One. Act Two engages students in a differentiated, rich task. During Act Three, students compare and discuss their work with peers outside their original groups.
Solve Problems using Place Value Strategies with a Carnival Theme
Students will work collaboratively through a fictitious real-world scenario to solve one‐step and multi‐step word problems. The lesson will involve solving addition and subtraction within 1,000 using a variety of strategies based on place value.
Express Yourself
Students determine which expression is a truth or a lie by generating equivalent expressions.
Keep Your Balance!
Students are introduced to solving one-variable, one-step equations using addition and subtraction through models and hands-on activities. The students will learn the substitution method of checking answers.
Perfecting Percents
Students will engage in an activity that allows them to explore the different parts of percents: part, whole, and percent, and develop conceptual understanding of percents through the Concrete, Representational, Abstract (CRA) method of instruction.
Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic Cells
Students will categorize cells as prokaryotic or eukaryotic by identifying the presence or lack of a nucleus.
Teacher Summing Up Lesson
Mission Possible—The Hierarchy of Polygons
The students participated in three missions that required them to independently classify two-dimensional quadrilaterals in a hierarchy of sets and subsets using a graphic organizer based on their attributes and properties.
Math at the Carnival
As students rotate through engaging learning stations, they utilize concrete objects, pictorial models, mnemonic devices, and strip diagrams to solve real-world, two and three-digit subtraction word problems, with and without regrouping.
Lights, Camera, Action!
Students compare and contrast potential and kinetic energy by creating a real-world model through a movie.
Does it have Potential?
Students will work with partners to investigate how mass, potential energy, and kinetic energy act on objects dropped from varying heights.
Video of the lesson being taught
Keeping it Concrete with Candy
Students will work collaboratively to apply and use digits, value, greater than/less than and base 10 knowledge to communicate numbers up to 1200 with a Halloween theme.
Pizza Place Value
Students compose and decompose numbers up to 1,200 in more than one way by participating in a teacher-created Three Act Task using a real-world scenario.