Holiday Feast - Math Project

Heading into the holiday season is a great time to motivate students.  There are many ways that allow students to realize that the holiday season my be fun but can be costly.  In this project I have the students completely plan a holdiay dinner event.  I have them organize and cost out the entire day including figuring out the taxes that are incurred.  Here is the criteria that I am using this year.

Geometry in our World - Middle School Math Project

So I have taught middle school math for many years and one of my goals is always to try to make
connections for the students.  Allow them to realize the importance of mathematics in the creation of our world as well as our current lives.  I have tried a few times to create projects around math in the everyday world and have always felt like they fell flat.  Students seemed to always struggle with the concept of math in our world.  Somehow the Fibanacci Sequence comes out and students become fixated and confused by the aspects of it.  They just could never really build the connection and learn anything. 

This year I decided to try once again, with my head held high and expectations booming to see what I could do with this topic.  I wanted the students to see the beauty of how math has shaped our lives.  I decided to change the focus from all math to just Geometry in our World.  This is a project that I actually had ongoing throughout the entire first term.    I gave them four general topics and allowed them to choose a theme for each topic.  They then had to find out what they could about the topic in that theme and give me 4 examples of their findings.

Here is the link to the criteria: Geometry in our world

Math Project - Designing your Backyard

When working on Measurement, project ideas are abundant.  There are so many things you can do with it to make it real for the students.  Here is an idea that fits right in.  This may have been one of the first math projects I ever did and the students really enjoyed it.  I basically had the kids design what they would like their backyard to look like.  There of course are certain criteria that the students had to put in but I also allowed them to add whatever they wanted into it.  You could extend this and have them try to figure out the cost, in fact I did it once but my students had a difficult time with it.  Now with more and more access to online research in the class the students can find information on cost a lot easier.

In this I had the students work on graph paper to make my marking a lot easier and I have seen other teachers have them do it on graph style chart paper which really brought the design out. Here is the criteria that I set out for them.
You can have the word document here if you don't want to copy and paste.

Flip Book - Middle School Math Project

Ok so flip, turn, slide or reflection, rotation, translation can be one of those items that gets skipped when other items take a bit longer.   It is one of those things that seems to be put on the backburner.  Well I started doing this project part way through the year to make sure it wouldn't get missed.  We start just after integers and begin learning about the Cartesian Plane and coordinate systems.  This then lends itself to the transformations that can occur on the plane.  I have had a lot of success with the flip book by have students create motion with their transformations.  I have the students work on how to rotate and translate as well as reflect.  Rotations need to start with easy 90 degrees, 180 degrees or 270 degrees.  More advances students can start trying other degrees but they usually have some difficulty with it.

Here are the sheets in one file:  Flipbook project sheets on my TPT site if you dont want to just recreate from this page.

Have the students use very simple characters or elements of nature.  Stick men running or the sun setting are just fine to start especially in the rough copy version.  Simple movements end up looking better in a flipbook.  I have had boats moving into the sunset and people on trampolines as easy examples. 

Alien Numbering System

In this era of education it is important to have work that is going to challenge all students.  I teach grades 6 and 7 and began going over the basics of numeration with properly understandign the base 10 system and how to read and write large and small numbers.  Many of the students in my class didn't need the practice and showed mastery of the material immediately.  By the way having students read decimal numbers properly sure helps later on.  Make them use the words tenths and hundredths all year long and your life will be easier when working with the relation of fractions and decimals later.

Anyway, I had my students mastery group begin to study other numbering systems and eventually create their own.  I received many thank you's at the end because these students were excited about learning this.  Easy correlation to computer programming which use different base systems.  I had them pretend they were inventing it for an alien group so that they would describe themselves fully.  I allowed them to present their material however they wanted and received a youtube video, a poster and a few text book style projects.  The students then began to appreciate the base 10 system and even months after the completion I still have students come to me as they are trying to learn more about different bases.

Smarties / Skittles - Data Analysis and Graphing Project

This idea didn't come from me.  It has been borrowed from a teacher I worked with years ago.  I took her idea and changed it a bit.  I have also adapted it based on whatever I want to teach that year, which makes it great. 

So even though this project may be difficult to connect to the real world and the question math teacher get the most "Why are we doing this", it is a lot of fun for the students.  Yes , it is based on candy which immediately gets their attention. 

I have used this to teach bar graphs, circle graphs, central tendenciesExcel, theoretical and experimental probability and even stem and leaf plots. The kids really seem to enjoy it and are generally interested in the results.

Here are the basics - bring in a box of Smarties or a bag of skittles.  Some students bring in huge family size bags but only an individual package is necessary.  There job is to graph the different colours that occur in the candy package.  Using probability I will ask them the chances of reaching in and grabbing a red one.  Or have them experiment on how often a red one comes out.  Yes it is silly but the kids get into it and learn because of the candy.  The display that they put together will have four graphs. The graphs open up and underneath the student explains the style of graph on top.  The can explain the data or explain the purpose of that style of graph. 

Examples:  I have done this a few times and so there are different styles here

Investing in the Stock Market - Middle School Math Project

This year I finally went for it and jumped into the stock market.  I know nothing about the stock market and so I told my students I wanted to learn.  We made a project out of it and after consulting friends about how to start we went for the competitve option.  The students had no idea about investing or business so we started by bringing in a guest speaker who talked about what people think about when they are going to invest.  The speaker was actually just a parent of a student in the class and she gave some excellent background information.

At the time we were also learning about integers and graphing and took some time with the students who already had demonstrated that they understood those concepts and brought them to the computer lab to begin researching websites, key terms and tips on how to invest.  They basically became the investment "experts" in our class.  After the others completed their math work on integers we had all the students enter the computer lab and paired them up with the experts.  Students then began teaching students on how to invest.  It was a very good starting point.

I had all the students join onto www.howthemarketworks.com which allowed them to not have to give away personal information.  They all practiced how to buy stocks and about the rise and fall of the market. 

Through the website I started a contest for the class where they got $10,000 and could invest it however then wanted with the restrictions of the contest and my own criteria where must have bought stocks in at least 3 different companies. 

And it was on!  Students were checking there stocks constantly, at nutrition break and lunch times you could hear students talking about their investments.  We continued going to the computer lab to do more research and students were eager to see how they could make more money.  I included at $5 dollar transaction fee and the students were angry with me because they thought it unfair but I told them that we are trying to make it as real as we could.  Some students held onto investments while others became  day traders and were constantly updating their account.  It was pretty cool to watch students so eager.  Some of the students were quite funny in that they were refreshing their portfolio every couple of minutes for the update of their account. 

The students learned about graphing, net gain and loss, percent gain and loss, and how hard it is to make money on the stock market.  Some students learned that you have to spend money to make it as they had $10,000 but only spent a small portion of it and couldn't keep up with the others.  Some spent all the money on some big name companies while others threw darts.  It was very interesting but in the end the one who did the most research actually made the most by investing in companies that were trending up as well as short selling stocks too.  In a month she made over $1500 which was pretty impressive.

Here is the criteria I gave them, please post comments on how it worked for you or if you changed what I did.  I would love to know. 

If you want to just download the criteria sheets I made go here:  Market Research

Mandala - Middle School Math Project

When trying to have my students work with circles and understand them one of the challenges that comes up is how to use the tools in the geometry kit.  The compass especially is challenging for the students as many of them have cheap ones and don't really have an idea how to use it.  I decided to create something that made them use the compass.  Enter the mandala.  This project brings in patterns, circles and creativity.  They make an excellent display and can be done in Art class if you want even though I did it in Math.  They link into Tibetan culture for a Social Studies aspect as well.

The Mandala is supposed to be meditative and so I also try to have the students relax while they create.  Having the students practice drawing circles on a blank page is a good way to start because they need the practice in making the circles as perfect as they can.

The mandala is supposed to start from the center so I get the student to start by drawing smaller circles and then just try to get them to create from there.  Even though they are supposed to flow I try to have my students use the tools from their geometry set as part of the process.  This video definitely helps them visualize.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g16B64myG-E&feature=share&list=FLb3QBPNaCFvuf1dE-FddGdA


Here are a couple of examples that I have:

                                                 

 I had the students also try to name the mandala and explain what it means to them.  The students enjoyed this, especially the ones who are not so fond of math because it is more of an Art project in their mind.  It did though begin to bring them into math a bit and find some strengths in the math class. 

Here is the criteria sheet that I gave them which also has a great website on how to draw mandalas.  I used some of their resources while making adaptations for some of my special needs students.

Becoming an Abacist - Middle School Math Project

I start the most years with numeration and understanding the number system.  I found that they enjoy starting the year with a project and get right into it.  I thought of this one summer and shared the idea with a few teachers (strangely a friend of mine thought of the same idea and planned the same project without us sharing it).  The idea is that we build an abacus or actually we made a soroban and learned out to use it properly. 

We used some youtube videos to help understand the sorobans and the students went to work making the abacus. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px_hvzYS3_Y&feature=share&list=FLb3QBPNaCFvuf1dE-FddGdA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvsnftXXKdw&feature=share&list=FLb3QBPNaCFvuf1dE-FddGdA



We used beads and thread and different shoeboxes but many of them turned out to be too big to use well.  The successful ones were made from box tops or lids and a few students used wooden skewers instead of thread.  I will post pictures of examples soon.

My friend used a popsicle stick method and was happy with those.

In designing and creating them the students were suddenly also using some measurement as well to put it together.  It was quite fun watching how the students built there own. 

The biggest benefit of using this project was that the students started to understand what base 10 measnt because of the nature of the abacus.  We also worked on adding and subtracting with an abacus and the students began naturally understanding why we line up the columns when using these operations.

Here is the criteria sheet that I gave the students: It is also free at my  TPT link:

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Supporting a Family - Middle School Math project

This project idea came out of trying to have awareness for needy families.  I have tried different versions of this project many times and have had success in every way with it.  The students really love this project.  They get the chance to bring in advertisements, catalogs and flyers as well as shopping online.  They really enjoy the challenge of trying to shop for a family and helping them out.  I have done this around Christmas time with a lot of success.  The students learn about adding, subtracting and multiplying with decimals, staying within a budget and about how much presents cost during the holiday season.  We also added in pricing out all the materials for Christmas dinner and this year actually took our classes to the local grocery store to price it all out.  The people working there were awesome and taught our kids about what gets taxed and what doesn't.    What I genreally do is create many different types of needy families and make some more challenging than others and then selectively distribute them to the kids. 

The displays and creativity of the procjects coming in have been amazing.  Christmas trees, stockings, prezis, powerpoints, posters, mock presents have all been parts of projects recieved during this project.  I have also been amazed at how seriously most students take this and often have them come to me with coupons and deals that they have found.  I usually accept all of them but the students have to show the calculations on how much savings there are.

Here is one of the criteria sheets I give.  All the criteria sheets are here. 

Middle School Math Project - Geometric Robot

I was looking for a way to build things with my kids because I had a few students who were quite skilled at it.  I don't remember if I made this one up or if I got the idea from somewhere but I know for sure that if I did borrow this idea I changed some things for the kids in my class.  The general idea is that we are sending up a robot to a different planet and need to build something with storage.  I had the students build robots by either giving them some nets or they designed it themselves.  Paper or cardboard was used by most of the students but a few also went to the school's  shop and built their ideas with wood.  They learned about different geometric solids, area and volume.  They had to draw out their plans and then try to build it.  The students really enjoyed this project and it was pretty easily adaptable for advanced learners as well as struggling learners. 

Here is the criteria sheet that I gave them:

Middle School Math Project - Mystery Number

I have always tried teaching students about Number Theory near the beginning of the year so that we can all have an understanding of the vocabulary that we will all need for the rest of the year.  I put some mystery number challenges in with some of the problem solving that I do with my students and they all enjoyed them.  We started creating our own and voila a new project was born.  Students have found this project fun just because they can make a puzzle with it and challenge others.  I have also had students put these on the display board outside of the room (another teacher's idea: not mine) and they attract quite an interest from other students.  The general idea is to learn things like prime, factors, multiples, but you could challenge students to put many other concepts in.  The criteria that I give them is below. 

Middle School Math Projects - Treasure Island

This project came to me while trying to cover a few topics at the same time near the end of the year.  Angles, probablity, measurement and I fit in ratios as well.  This project has been borrowed by quite a few people and adapted in many different ways.  The idea is that the student are pirates and need to bury their treasure.  The must make a treasure map and give directions on where the treasure is buried.  There are many things you can do with it.  Here is my original criteria sheet that I handed out to students.  The possibilites of what can be done here are endless.

Math projects for Middle School - Designing a hotel

As an educator in Middle school for over a decade I have been actively creating math projects.  I also at times run out of ideas and am always looking for collaboration.  I figured this out a few years ago when on a learning team about Math and again recently when I changed jobs and now have the chance to discuss ideas with my partner.  Through the discussion new projects are created.  My idea here is to post different projects that I have created but hope that others will post there ideas as well. 

My first post is a new idea that my partner and I recently put together.  The idea revolves around students designing a Las Vegas style hotel.  See the Criteria Sheet I put together and make comments if you wish. If you use the idea, it would be great to see the results of what you did.  We have not used this idea yet but it is going to be our next project.  Feel free to change anything in the project, we are hoping to have the students build there hotels with either foam board or cardboard and then have a Vegas type day where the students have a chance to go to the hotel and play some of the games there.  We will hopefully make a miniature Vegas Strip for kids.  I will try to post some pictures when the project is done.

Please also see my update post at: http://underbutover.blogspot.ca/2013/04/designing-hotel-update-middle-school.html