Tag Archives: proportions

Greenies

By Fawn | Published: February 2, 2015

Our black lab Mandy is 3.5 years old, weighs a ton, and her breath used to smell like death. Until we started giving her one Greenies a day. My husband orders them from Amazon, he also gets them for our neighbor’s small dog Bailey. Although both boxes weigh the same 36 ounces, Bailey gets 130 treats in the Teenie size and Mandy […]

Posted in Math 8 | Also tagged dog treats, estimation, Greenies, modeling, problem solving, proportional reasoning, ratios, scaling | 5 Responses

Rates and Proportional Reasoning

By Fawn | Published: July 18, 2014

I’ve been hyper focused on “rates” and “proportional reasoning” for a project I’m working on. Not that one has to look far and wide either, unit rates and proportions are all around us. We intentionally and inadvertently compare things. (HA! I didn’t even realize what this product was until I’m cropping and re-sizing them for this […]

Posted in Course 1 (6th Grade Math) | Also tagged comparing prices, estimation, estimation180, generic brands, MiraLAX, product labels, proportional reasoning, rates, unit conversions, unit rates | 2 Responses

Prices, Proportions, Percents

By Fawn | Published: April 3, 2014

I was in Garden Grove with my son on Sunday, and he insisted that I try this smoothie place called Tastea. With Jamba Juice and Blenders and all the other juice bars around town, I was skeptical that this joint’s concoctions would be anything different. He ordered a taro milk tea and I got a Thai […]

Posted in Course 1 (6th Grade Math) | Also tagged blended, drinks, estimation, percents, smoothies, Starbucks, Tastea | 1 Response

Sleep On It

By Fawn | Published: May 1, 2013

This lesson mattress_sizes1 is the result of my spending 4 nights sleeping on a really nice bed wrapped under thousand-thread-count sheets! Part 1: The Mattresses I asked the kids to guess how the size of the little rectangles on paper compare to the real mattresses. (It’s 2% of actual.) We ignored the thickness. Then I asked them what the scale […]

Posted in Course 1 (6th Grade Math) | Also tagged area, comparing values, converting units, percent of, pricing structures, rates, ratios | 3 Responses

One Rod Tall

By Fawn | Published: March 8, 2013

I’ve written before about reading books to my kids and following up with an activity. I read the poem one_inch_tall to my 6th graders as we’re studying ratios and proportions. One Inch Tall by Shel Silverstein If you were only one inch tall, you’d ride a worm to school. The teardrop of a crying ant would be your swimming pool. A […]

Posted in Course 1 (6th Grade Math) | Also tagged math and literature, Nico Rowinsky, poem, ratios, Sally Strange, Shel Silverstein | Leave a comment

From Listerine to Fuji Water

By Fawn | Published: February 14, 2013

I was brushing my teeth. The next evening, after dropping my car off for a nail to be removed from the right rear tire, I killed time at Michaels and Trader Joe’s. I created this lesson relative_ratios from that. My 6th graders are working on ratios and proportions. I saw the three different-sized bottles of Listerine on my bathroom counter […]

Posted in Course 1 (6th Grade Math) | Also tagged diameter, estimation, estimation180, Michaels, ratios, volume | 4 Responses

Visualizing Volume is Tricky!

By Fawn | Published: June 13, 2012

This was one of those lessons that I think I gained a lot more than my 6th graders did. It was meant as a one-period activity, but I kept going off on different tangents and brought the students along for the ride. Over a month ago Andrew (@mr_stadel) tweeted me a picture that he took of a William Sonoma display of their […]

Posted in Course 1 (6th Grade Math), Geometry, Problem Solving | Also tagged Andrew Stadel, cupcake mixes, cylinders, estimation, number sense, problem solving, surface area, volume, William Sonoma | Leave a comment

Blaming the British Paper Size

By Fawn | Published: June 1, 2012

I bought this lovely red book — and the blue one too — from the Shell Centre for Mathematical Education back in 2007 and paid a pretty penny to get it shipped from Nottingham, UK. [07/04/14: This book is now available for free download.] I noticed immediately that the book and the “Masters for Photocopying” were not of the […]

Posted in Algebra, Course 1 (6th Grade Math) | Also tagged A4 paper, area, perimeter, problem solving, ratios, Shell Centre, system of equations, The Language of Functions and Graphs, Warmsnug Double Glazing | 1 Response

Playing with Barbies

By Fawn | Published: February 1, 2012

I got most of my 20-plus Barbies from eBay, and I make good use of them. I use the Barbies with my 6th graders when we study proportions, and with my algebra students we do the Barbie Bungee activity when we study linear equations. The students work in groups of three, one Barbie per group. […]