This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: The students in Ms. Baca’s art class were mixing yellow and blue paint. She told them that two mixtures will be the same shade of green if the blue and...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Carlos bought $6\frac12$ pounds of bananas for \$5.20. What is the price per pound of the bananas that Carlos bought?[_____] What quantity of bananas w...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: The students in Carli’s class built some solar-powered robots which they raced in the cafeteria of the school. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOI66f4BS...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Julianna participated in a walk-a-thon to raise money for cancer research. She recorded the total distance she walked at several different points in ti...

This this task about mixing paint requires students to graph ratios on a coordinate plane. It is a standard language in ratio problem.

This this task about mixing paint requires students to graph ratios on a coordinate plane. It is a standard language in ratio problem.

Ratio errors confuse a dodgeball coach as two teams face off in an epic tournament. See how mathematical techniques such as tables, graphs, measurements and equations help to find the missing part of a proportion.

Baby Proportions is an activity designed to challenge students to compare body measurement proportions of adults, students and infants. They then use these proportions to create a scale drawing of themselves and an infant enlarged to be their same height. The idea is to use real world measurements in practicing proportional relationship skills while creating an interesting image when finished.  

True love has the right ratio. In this humorous animation, the number of words spoken by each partner predicts whether a date goes well or horribly. What do you do when someone asks if you listen to country music backwards, but won't let you get a word in edgewise?

This Cyberchase video segment features Bianca, who must figure out the fastest route to a movie premiere.

Students learn about stress and strain by designing and building beams using polymer clay. They compete to find the best beam strength to beam weight ratio, and learn about the trade-offs engineers make when designing a structure.

In this math activity, students conduct a strength test using modeling clay, creating their own stress vs. strain graphs, which they compare to typical steel and concrete graphs. They learn the difference between brittle and ductile materials and how understanding the strength of materials, especially steel and concrete, is important for engineers who design bridges and structures.

This is a task where it would be appropriate for students to use technology such as a graphing calculator or GeoGebra, making it a good candidate for students to engage in Standard for Mathematical Practice 5 Use appropriate tools strategically.

Accuracy of measurement in navigation depends very much on the situation. If a sailor's target is an island 200 km wide, sailing off center by 10 or 20 km is not a major problem. But, if the island were only 1 km wide, it would be missed if off just the smallest bit. Many of the measurements made while navigating involve angles, and a small error in the angle can translate to a much larger error in position when traveling long distances.

In a multi-week experiment, students monitor the core temperatures of two compost piles, one control and one tended, to see how air and water affect microbial activity. They daily aerate and wet the "treated" pile and collect 4-6 weeks' worth of daily temperature readings. Once the experiment is concluded, students plot and analyze their data to compare the behavior of the two piles. They find that the treated pile becomes hotter, an indication that more microbes are active and releasing heat. Through this activity, students see that microbes play a role in composting and how composting can be used as a carbon management process.

With the help of simple, teacher-led demonstration activities, students learn the basic concepts of heat transfer by means of conduction, convection, and radiation. Students then apply these concepts as they work in teams to solve two problems. One problem requires that they maintain the warm temperature of one soda can filled with water at approximately body temperature, and the other problem is to cause an identical soda can of warm water to cool as much as possible during the same thirty-minute time interval. Students design their solutions using only common, everyday materials. They record the water temperatures in their two soda cans every five minutes, and prepare line graphs in order to visually compare their results to the temperature of an unaltered control can of water.

Students learn about the many types of expenses associated with building a bridge. Working like engineers, they estimate the cost for materials for a bridge member of varying sizes. After making calculations, they graph their results to compare how costs change depending on the use of different materials (steel vs. concrete). They conclude by creating a proposal for a city bridge design based on their findings.

Students learn the engineering design process by following the steps, from problem identification to designing a device and evaluating its efficacy and areas for improvement. A quick story at the beginning of the activity sets up the challenge: A small child put a pebble in his ear and we don't know how to get it out! Acting as biomedical engineers, students are asked to design a device to remove it. Each student pair is provided with a model ear canal and a variety of classroom materials. A worksheet guides the design process as students create devices and attempt to extract pebbles from the ear canal.

This lesson unit is intended to help you assess whether students recognize relationships of direct proportion and how well they solve problems that involve proportional reasoning. In particular, it is intended to help you identify those students who: use inappropriate additive strategies in scaling problems, which have a multiplicative structure; rely on piecemeal and inefficient strategies such as doubling, halving, and decomposition, and have not developed a single multiplier strategy for solving proportionality problems; and see multiplication as making numbers bigger, and division as making numbers smaller.

Students design and conduct experiments to determine what environmental factors favor decomposition by soil microbes. They use chunks of carrots for the materials to be decomposed, and their experiments are carried out in plastic bags filled with dirt. Every few days students remove the carrots from the dirt and weigh them. Depending on the experimental conditions, after a few weeks most of the carrots will have decomposed completely.