In Mona Iehl's third grade class at Polaris Charter Academy in Chicago, Illinois, students are developing a conceptual understanding of the commutative property of multiplication. Rather than providing direct instruction, Mona is using a process of grappling and student-centered discourse, which promotes deeper mathematical understanding, and builds powerful habits of learning.

Area: Earth Systems

This Fifth Grade unit is the FIRST in the curriculum of four (4) units developed to address the Fifth Grade science standards of the Michigan Science Standards related to Earth Systems.

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This video is meant to be a fun, hands-on session that gets students to think hard about how machines work. It teaches them the connection between the geometry that they study and the kinematics that engineers use -- explaining that kinematics is simply geometry in motion. In this lesson, geometry will be used in a way that students are not used to. Materials necessary for the hands-on activities include two options: pegboard, nails/screws and a small saw; or colored construction paper, thumbtacks and scissors. Some in-class activities for the breaks between the video segments include: exploring the role of geometry in a slider-crank mechanism; determining at which point to locate a joint or bearing in a mechanism; recognizing useful mechanisms in the students' communities that employ the same guided motion they have been studying.

Students have so many on line resources to help them, especially when they miss a class but don't know how to use them all.  In this lesson, students will use the Interactive Student Edition to walk through the interactive resource to help them complete their note book pages.

Challenged with a hypothetical engineering work situation in which they need to figure out the volume and surface area of a nuclear power plant’s cooling tower (a hyperbolic shape), students learn to calculate the volume of complex solids that can be classified as solids of revolution or solids with known cross sections. These objects of complex shape defy standard procedures to compute volumes. Even calculus techniques depend on the ability to perform multiple measurements of the objects or find functional descriptions of their edges. During both guided and independent practice, students use (free GeoGebra) geometry software, a photograph of the object, a known dimension of it, a spreadsheet application and integral calculus techniques to calculate the volume of complex shape solids within a margin of error of less than 5%—an approach that can be used to compute the volumes of big or small objects. This activity is suitable for the end of the second semester of AP Calculus classes, serving as a major grade for the last six-week period, with students’ project results presentation grades used as the second semester final test.

At its most basic this Nrich task is an exercise in reading and recording information from a table. It also offers opportunities for children to do some elementary reasoning as they compare results with each other and work out why they differ.

In this video segment from Cyberchase, Bianca goes on a quest to find out if a coin toss really is a 50-50 proposition.

Math can be solved through story problems. Most stories are divided into three acts. Learn about the 3 Act Math program.

Would You Rather Math is a website that contains fun math challenges that students can solve. A picture is presented with a math task and a question that begins with, Would you rather?”. A worksheet is available for problem-solving. Students justify their answer with mathematics. This is a perfect website for math centers and can be used at different grade levels other than 4th. Can be used at 3rd grade on up depending on the skill level of the students.