Activity
Houston Area Calculus Teachers

Polynomial Graphing

For Students 11th - Higher Ed Standards
Your AP Calculus learners probably have their ID numbers memorized, but have they tried graphing them? Pique your pupils' interest by asking each to create a unique polynomial function based on their ID numbers, and then analyze the...
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Teach Engineering

Understanding the Air through Data Analysis

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Is there a correlation or causation relationship between air pollutants? Groups develop a hypothesis about the daily variation of air pollutants, specifically ozone and CO2. Using Excel to analyze the data, the groups evaluate their...
Lesson Plan
Illustrative Mathematics

Bike Race

For Teachers 7th - 9th Standards
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...
Activity
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Teach Engineering

Using Hooke's Law to Understand Materials

For Teachers 10th - 12th Standards
Provide a Hooke for a lesson on elasticity with an activity that has groups investigate a set of springs. They use a set procedure to collect data to calculate the spring constant for each spring using Hooke's Law. The groups...
Lesson Plan
Illustrative Mathematics

Who Has the Best Job?

For Teachers 7th - 9th Standards
Making money is important to teenagers. It is up to your apprentices to determine how much two wage earners make with their after school jobs. Participants work with a table, an equation, and a graph and compare the two workers to see...
Activity
Teach Engineering

Energy Perspectives

For Teachers 8th - 10th Standards
The data says ... the resource is great to use. Using Microsoft Excel, pupils analyze data from the US Department of Energy in the fifth lesson of a 25-part Energy Systems and Solutions unit. Each group looks at a different data set and...
Activity
PBL Pathways

Students and Teachers 2

For Students 10th - Higher Ed Standards
Examine trends in student-to-teacher ratios over time. Building from the first task in the two-part series, classes now explore the pattern of student-to-teacher ratios using a non-linear function. After trying to connect the pattern to...
Activity
PBL Pathways

Medical Insurance

For Students 10th - Higher Ed Standards
Design a plan for finding the best health insurance for your money. Learners compare two health plans by writing and graphing piecewise functions representing the plan rules. Using Excel software, they create a technical report...
Activity
Teach Engineering

Air Pollution in the Pacific Northwest

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
Scholars investigate levels of nitrogen dioxide in the Pacific Northwest by examining the role of nitrogen in air pollution and how remote sensing can be used to measure nitrogen levels. An Excel spreadsheet calculates the difference...
Activity
PBL Pathways

Medical Insurance 3

For Students 11th - Higher Ed Standards
Create a technical report explaining the components of a medical plan through a function. The project-based learning activity gives a medical insurance scenario that young mathematicians model using piecewise functions. Their analyses...
Activity
2
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Teach Engineering

Preconditioning Balloons: Viscoelastic Biomedical Experiments

For Teachers 10th - 12th Standards
What does stretching a balloon have to do with equilibrium? Groups explore preconditioning by stretching a balloon to a point of equilibrium. They then measure the amount of force required to stretch the balloon to the same point several...
Lesson Plan
Illustrative Mathematics

Writing Constraints

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Use this resource to present your number crunchers with how to write a constraint equation and to determine viable solutions. The price of an object limits the amount that can be purchased. The speed at which you walk limits the number...
Activity
Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Gorongosa: Scientific Inquiry and Data Analysis

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
How does the scientific process begin? Introduce ecology scholars to scientific inquiry through an insightful, data-driven lesson. Partners examine data from an ongoing research study to determine the questions it answers. The resource...
Activity
Curated OER

A Model Solar System

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
If Earth is modeled by a grapefruit, what planet could be represented by a golf ball? This activity uses everyday and not-so-everyday objects to create a model of the Solar System.
Activity
101 Questions

Stopping Distances

For Students 9th - 12th Standards
In 2016, one in every four fatal car crashes listed speeding as a contributing factor. Pupils view videos of a car trying to come to a quick stop from four different rates of speed. They use context clues to measure and determine the...
Lesson Plan
Agriculture in the Classroom

The Garden Chef

For Teachers K - 7th
Introduce young chefs to nutritious eating with a cookbook that is divided into sections focusing on one of the five food groups. It includes lessons, activities, and recipes. How wholesome!
Activity
PBL Pathways

Potassium-Argon Dating

For Students 10th - Higher Ed Standards
Find the age of a fictional sample of rocks using a genuine approach. A well-designed lesson asks young mathematicians to use exponential modeling to analyze half-life. As a project-based learning activity, scholars communicate...
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Curated OER

Access Ramp

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Just about every public building that your students are familiar with has an access ramp which complies with ADA requirements. As it turns out, designing such a ramp is an excellent activity to incorporate slope, the Pythagorean Theorem,...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The Square Counting Shortcut

For Teachers 2nd - 4th Standards
An excellent lesson that encourages students to discover how complex figures can be broken into simpler shapes when measuring area. Working with block letters, learners are given the freedom to develop their own strategies for...
Activity
PBL Pathways

College Costs

For Students 10th - Higher Ed Standards
Predict the year that college costs will double in your state using linear modeling. The first part of this two-part project based learning activity asks young mathematicians to use data from the College Board. They graph the data,...
Activity
101 Questions

Stacking Cups

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
Facilitate an understanding of equality using a modeling task. After watching different-sized cups being stacked, learners use their math skills to determine when the height of each cup tower will be the same. Meant as an introduction to...
Activity
PBL Pathways

Students and Teachers

For Students 10th - Higher Ed Standards
Predict the future of education through a mathematical analysis. Using a project-based learning strategy, classes examine the pattern of student-to-teacher ratios over a period of years. Provided with the relevant data, learners create a...
Activity
Teach Engineering

Applying Statistics to Nano-Circuit Dimensions in Fabrication

For Students 11th - 12th Standards
Do flexible circuits change dimensions during fabrication? Groups use GeoGebra software to measure the length of pictures of flexible nano-circuits. To determine if the circuits change dimensions, future engineers use Microsoft...
Activity
North Haven Middle School

Environmental Expert Presentation

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Individuals or groups select an environmental issue, then spend time researching and creating a presentation to share in class. By allowing learners to choose the issue that matters most to them, you will motivate them to do...