This Nrich activity is an unusual context in which pupils can consolidate recognizing, finding, naming and writing fractions. The rich environment also gives them the opportunity to identify, name and write equivalent fractions of a given fraction, represented visually as a chain. Furthermore, learners will be adding and subtracting fractions with the same denominators and denominators which are multiples of the same number.

Richard grew up in Kenya as a Maasai boy, herding his family’s cattle, which represented their wealth and livelihood. Richard’s challenge was to protect their cattle from the lions who prowled the night just outside the barrier of acacia branches that surrounded the farm’s boma, or stockade. Though not well-educated, 12-year-old Richard loved tinkering with electronics. Using salvaged components, spending $10, he surrounded the boma with blinking lights, and the system works; it keeps lions away. His invention, Lion Lights, is now used in Africa, Asia, and South America to protect farm animals from predators. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Your challenge is to use broken or old technology and other available resources to create a prototype that can be used to protect your home. This could involve tinkering, hacking, or redesigning the components of the technology to meet your needs.

A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.

This problem gives work on percentages in an interesting and challenging way. It also gives you an opportunity to discuss different ways of estimating and therefore shows learners how expressions which look very different can give very close answers.

The true story of how Momofuko Ando was inspired to create one of the world’s most popular foods after seeing long lines of hungry people waiting for a simple bowl of ramen following World War II. He dreamed about making a new kind of ramen noodle soup that was quick, convenient, and tasty for the hungry people because he believed that peace follows from a hungry stomach. With persistence, creativity, and a little inspiration, Ando succeeded. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Develop a food product (a new food, tool, or invention, et al) to help increase access to food in your community.

Students will create and use a ten frames tool to help to understand counting, place value, number relationships, adding, and subtracting.

This Nrich problem brings in doubling, halves and quarters in a very practical way using rods made from interlocking cubes. It gives children a practical context in which to explore simple multiplying and dividing, even if these particular terms are not used explicitly. It can provide a very useful context for introducing and using the vocabulary of halves and quarters.

Unit 1: Scale Drawings
Lesson 3: Making Scaled Copies

In the previous lesson, students learned that we can use scale factors to describe the relationship between corresponding lengths in scaled figures. Here they apply this idea to draw scaled copies of simple shapes on and off a grid. They also strengthen their understanding that the relationship between scaled copies is multiplicative, not additive. Students make careful arguments about the scaling process (MP3), have opportunities to use tools like tracing paper or index cards strategically (MP5).

As students draw scaled copies and analyze scaled relationships more closely, encourage them to continue using the terms scale factor and corresponding in their reasoning.

This Nrich problem encourages children to use counting-on techniques, but offers you an opportunity to introduce them to the idea of multiples.

Unit 5: Arithmetic in Base Ten
Lesson 15: Making and Measuring Boxes

In this optional culminating lesson of the unit, students construct open-top origami boxes by folding different-size square paper. Before folding, they make conjectures about how the paper size affects the length and area measurements of the boxes. Later, they test their conjectures by finding and analyzing those measurements (MP8). While arithmetic operations on decimals are central to this work, students also build on their geometric work from earlier units. As they investigate the relationship between the side lengths of the origami paper and the edge lengths of the boxes, they also connect to their work on ratios.

This lesson is organized into two parts:

Part 1: Measure, predict, and fold. Students carefully measure the sheets of square paper, predict the measurements of the boxes created from different-size sheets, and fold their paper into a box.
Part 2: Measure, calculate, and compare. Students carefully measure the dimensions of the boxes, calculate their surface areas, and then compare the sizes of the boxes. They also reflect on the accuracy of their predictions from Part 1.
Depending on the instructional choices made, this lesson could take one or more class meetings. The time estimates are intentionally left blank because the amount of time needed might vary depending on factors such as:

The size of the class.
How familiar students are folding paper into shapes.
How student work is ultimately shared with the class (not at all, informally, or with formal presentations).
Consider defining the scope of work further for students and setting a time limit for each part of the activity to focus students’ work and optimize class time.

Tells the story of how the Slinky, the most popular toy in American history, was invented. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Develop a commercial about the Slinky.

A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.

This Nrich game can be played to improve students' recognition of equivalent fractions, decimals and percentages.

Students sort and classify triangles based on similarities. Students are asked to discuss their decisions in this Nrich activity.

Multiplication and division fact fluency is a Common Core grade-level standard for third grade. Students can practice their fact fluency and have some fun at the same time!

Khan Academy https://www.khanacademy.org/ is a free website for educators to use with their students. It produces short lessons in the form of videos. It also includes practice exercises and materials.

This Blooket provides 22 questions to help 3rd-grade students understand the kinds of questions they may see on the 3rd Grade Math M-STEP test. It’s the perfect way for kids to practice questions before actually taking the test.

Math Snacks is a fun and interactive educational series. This website contains five animated videos focusing on key mathematical concepts included in the Common Core curriculum for grades 4-8. Each interactive is beautifully illustrated, contains audio, and is supported by supplementary printable resources. All learner resources are available in both English and Spanish. Teacher guides as well as teaching videos support classroom implementation. A powerful supplementary tool for educators teaching about ratios, rates, scale factor, unit conversion, and the number line, as well as a source for children's educational entertainment at home.
Math Snacks was developed by the Learning Games Lab located at New Mexico State University.

Second graders learn new math facts and skills. It is important that they learn about mathematicians who made math discoveries and contributed to the field of mathematics. Learning about mathematicians will help them understand the importance of mathematics and inspire them to do their best in their math studies. In this lesson, students will use Michigan eLibrary to do their research.

In this Nrich problem students evaluate percentages in the real world situation of an election.

Unit 6: Expressions and Equations
Lesson 12: Meaning of Exponents

In their prior work with area and volume, students encountered expressions in which a number was squared or cubed. This lesson extends that work by considering exponent notation for any positive whole number exponent. In the warm-up, students first consider a dot pattern where the number of dots is repeatedly multiplied by 3 in each successive level. They next consider a situation involving money that repeatedly doubles, and engage in MP8 by connecting the repeated calculations to expressions involving exponents. Students then make use of the new shorthand notation to write expressions with exponents that evaluate to a given number.

Unit 4: Dividing Fractions
Lesson 2: Meanings of Division

In this lesson, students revisit the relationship between multiplication and division that they learned in prior grades. Specifically, students recall that we can think of multiplication as expressing the number of equal-size groups, and that we can find a product if we know the number of groups and the size of each group. They interpret division as a way of finding a missing factor, which can either be the number of groups, or the size of one group. They do so in the context of concrete situations and by using diagrams and equations to support their reasoning.

As they represent division situations with diagrams and equations and interpret division equations in context, students reason quantitatively and abstractly (MP2).