US Department of Commerce
Featured Activity: Population Change Over Time
Keep track of a state's population. After a brief discussion on how population data is used for funding, individuals look at population changes over time. Pupils find the population of two states using three different censuses. They then...
PBS
The Lowdown — Exploring Changing Obesity Rates through Ratios and Graphs
Math and medicine go hand-in-hand. After viewing several infographics on historical adult obesity rates, pupils consider how they have changed over time. They then use percentages to create a new graph and write a list of questions the...
US Department of Commerce
Immigration Nation
People come and people go. Given tabular census data on the annual number of immigrants from four different regions of the world between 2000 and 2010, pupils create double bar graphs and line graphs from the data. They analyze their...
PBS
The Lowdown — What You Need to Know about Immigration Reform
We're all from somewhere. An informative interactive provides information on immigration, foreign-born residents, and deportations. Pupils interpret the graphics to analyze how these quantities have changed over time. The resource is...
Curated OER
Mathemafish Population
It's shark week! In this problem, young mathematically minded marine biologists need to study the fish population by analyzing data over time. The emphasis is on understanding the average rate of change of the population and drawing...
US Environmental Protection Agency
Weather and Climate: What's the Difference?
Future weather forecasters collect daily temperatures over a period of time. Afterward, they compare their data with monthly averages, as researched on national weather websites, in order to grasp the difference between weather and...
PBS
Real-World Proportional Relationships: Gender Wage Gap
When will the gender wage gap disappear? Scholars use a provided infographic to see trends in wage gap over time. They use ratios of women's wages to men's wages to determine which decades had the greatest change in the wage gap. The...
Illustrative Mathematics
Logistic Growth Model, Abstract Version
Here learners get to flex some serious algebraic muscles through an investigation of logistic growth. The properties of the constant terms in the logistic growth formula are unraveled in a short but content-dense...
Teach Engineering
Start Networking!
Class members create their own social networks by collecting signatures before graphing the interactions with their fellow classmates. The degree distribution of the simulated social network is determined by calculating the degree of...
Illustrative Mathematics
Bike Race
A graph not only tells us who won the bike race, but also what happened during the race. Use this resource to help learners understand graphs. The commentary suggests waiting until the end of the year to introduce this topic, but why...
101 Questions
Slow Church
The church that just can't stay put! A video presentation raises questions of just how far the church will move. Presented with the rate of movement and a range of time expected, scholars build an inequality to answer the question.
NASA
Climate Change Inquiry Lab
With global temperatures on the rise faster than ever recorded, the effects of a heating planet could be devastating. Allow learners to discover just what the world is in store for if the warming continues through a series of videos, a...
NOAA
Climate, Weather…What’s the Difference?: Make an Electronic Temperature Sensor
What's the best way to record temperature over a long period of time? Scholars learn about collection of weather and temperature data by building thermistors in the fourth installment of the 10-part Discover Your Changing World series....
Illustrative Mathematics
Riding by the Library
Draw a graph that shows the qualitative features of a function that has been described verbally. Make sure learners understand where time is zero and the distance is zero. It may take them some time to understand this concept, so working...
Federal Reserve Bank
FRED in the Classroom: Measures of Inflation
Don't just tell class members about how to measure inflation, have them experience it firsthand by asking them to work with real data and construct graphs!
Science Matters
Spaghetti Fault Model
Does increasing the pressure between two moving plates provide a stabilizing force or create more destruction? The hands-on lesson encourages exploration of strike-split fault models. The sixth lesson in a 20-part series asks...
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
Sunrise, Sunset
What locations on Earth get the longest number of hours of daylight in the summer? Hint: It's not the equator! Use real-world sunrise and sunset data to develop trigonometric models that can be used to estimate the number of hours of...
Space Race
Sensory Detectives
Test your learners' sensory awareness with three hands-on activities that ask pupils to use their other senses to identify and describe everyday objects hidden from sight.
Teach Engineering
Accelerometer: Centripetal Acceleration
Scholars build robotic arms that swing back and forth and use them to collect velocity and acceleration data. To analyze the results, pupils compare data to the equations for angular velocity and centripetal acceleration.
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments: Outbreak!
In this activity, students simulate the spread of a virus. They produce a graph representing the spread and analyze the rates of change over time. Students compare how viral and bacterial infections spread in a population.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Population Growth Curves
Using Avida-ED freeware, students control a few factors in an environment populated with digital organisms, and then compare how changing these factors affects population growth. They experiment by altering the environment size (similar...
US Department of Education
Nces: How to Create a Pie Chart
Resource from the National Center for Education Statistics provides tools and steps for creating printable pie charts online. Fill in the information, click the necessary buttons, and you have created a pie chart!
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Much Heat Will It Hold?
Students relate thermal energy to heat capacity by comparing the heat capacities of different materials and graphing the change in temperature over time for a specific material. Students learn why heat capacity is an important property...