Discovery Education
Fuss About Dust
Dust is everywhere around us; it's unavoidable. But what exactly is dust and are certain locations dustier than others? These are the questions students try to answer in an interesting scientific investigation. Working independently or...
Illustrative Mathematics
Number of the Day
Daily routines not only help to manage classrooms, they can also provide students with rich opportunities for learning. This activity supports young learners in developing their number sense by counting up the school days on a class...
Illustrative Mathematics
Growing Bean Plants
Plant growth experiments offer rich, cross-curricular learning opportunities that can really excite and engage young learners. In this series, children work in pairs planting, measuring, and comparing the height of bean plants in order...
Illustrative Mathematics
Weather Graph Data
Teaching young mathematicians about collecting and analyzing data allows for a variety of fun and engaging activities. Here, children observe the weather every day for a month, recording their observations in the form of a bar graph....
Illustrative Mathematics
Sort and Count II
Capture the engagement of young mathematicians with this hands-on sorting activity. Given a bag of objects, students work independently sorting the items based on their physical attributes, counting to determine the size of each group....
Illustrative Mathematics
Sort and Count
Young mathematicians are on their feet and moving around in this primary grade sorting activity. After giving each child an object or picture card, they then sort themselves into groups, counting to see which has the most or least...
Illustrative Mathematics
Size Shuffle
In the eyes of children the world is a simple place, objects are either big or small. This simple activity aims to expand the comparison language of young mathematicians as they use the words taller and shorter to compare their...
Illustrative Mathematics
Longer and Heavier? Shorter and Heavier?
For many young children it seems obvious that longer objects are heavier than shorter objects. This assumption is put to the test as the class investigates the relationship between length and weight in a whole-group activity. Using a...
Curated OER
How Heavy
Break out the balances for this primary grade lesson on weight measurement. Using common elementary school manipulatives like unifix or snap cubes, young mathematicians determine the weight of four different classroom objects. A graphic...
Illustrative Mathematics
Christina's Candies
Help Christina figure out how many chocolate and lemon candies she has with a lesson on decomposing numbers. When presenting this context to the class, the teacher chooses the total number of candies and the number that are chocolate,...
Curated OER
US Airports, Assessment Variation
Determining relationships is all part of algebra and functions. Your mathematicians will decide the type of relationship between airports and population and translate what the slope and y-intercept represent. The problem is multiple...
Lincoln Public Schools
Cereal Box Project
Challenge your class with this fun and engaging engineering design project. The goal, to create a brand new cereal complete with a list of ingredients, a name and logo, and a box to hold it in. Starting with a survey to determine the...
Scholastic
Study Jams! Addition & Subtraction Equations
Zoe is decorating a cake for her grandpa's birthday and needs to know how many more candles to add. Follow along as she explains how to set up and solve algebraic equations in this step-by-step presentation. Equations with negative...
Scholastic
Study Jams! Add & Subtract with Common Denominators
RJ and Zoey are at camp and need to get back to the mess hall for lunch, but they don't know how far they have to walk. Help them figure out the distance while teaching young mathematicians how to add and subtract fractions with this...
Scholastic
Study Jams! Probability as a Fraction
Pick a card, any card... and then follow along with this step-by-step presentation as Sam from the Study Jams! crew determines what chance he has of drawing a jack from a deck of cards. This context serves to clearly model how fractions...
Curated OER
Stock Swaps, Variation 3
More on the fictitious takeover of the Apple Corporation by Microsoft. For this scenario, Microsoft has $28.00 per share to spare, so how many do they need to offer to make an even trade? This is an engaging problem to solve when...
Curated OER
Stock Swaps, Variation 2
If Microsoft wanted to take over Apple, how many shares would they need to break even? This is an ideal task for seventh graders who are studying proportional relationships and applying them to real-world scenarios. Use it as an...
Education Closet
Equal Rhythms
Engage young mathematicians in learning about fractions with this cross-curricular math and music lesson. After listening to and repeating different beat patterns, children realize that musical notes are just another way of representing...
The New York Times
Understanding the Mathematics of the Fiscal Cliff
What exactly is the fiscal cliff? What are the effects of changing income tax rates and payroll tax rates? Your learners will begin by reading news articles and examining graphs illustrating the "Bush tax cuts" of 2001 and 2003. They...
Curated OER
Allele and Phenotype Frequencies in Rock Pocket Mouse Populations
In the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, some tiny creatures show just how quickly natural selection can turn a mutation into an advantageous adaptation. Watch a video about rock pocket mice, who show that one small change can make all...
Scholastic
Study Jams! Mean/Average
Join Zoe as she calculates the average number of points RJ scored in his basketball games. This step-by-step presentation clearly models the procedure for finding the mean of a data set, including examples with both whole number and...
Scholastic
Study Jams! Median
Zoe is curious how many goals her soccer team usually scores in a game. To answer the question, she walks through the process of finding the median of a data set in this step-by-step presentation. Examples are included that model how to...
Scholastic
Study Jams! Mode
Sam is running for class treasurer and Zoe wants to know if he won the election. Follow along as she counts up the votes and uses the mode to determine the winner. After viewing the presentation, work through the Try It! practice...
Scholastic
Study Jams! Double-Digit Division
RJ had an awesome basketball season this year! Use division by double-digit numbers to calculate his scoring average in this instructional presentation. Starting with an explanation of the terms dividend, divisor,...