Preparation prior to lesson:
- email sent to students with template for writing and recording their data.
- video camera available for student use throughout the lesson
Facilitator and Student Steps:
- Introduce essential question: How much dechlorinator do we need for our aquarium?
- Activate prior knowledge: Allow students to ask questions and say what they think they know about the essential question. They also discuss what they think that the question is asking them to do (facilitator does not participate)
- Develop a plan: Students decide as a group what measurements to use.
- Teamwork: Facilitator divides students into two groups to work.
- Taking action: Students measure the aquarium testing out and exploring what they might need to measure to answer their question.
- Accurate measurements: After some test runs and playing around with different measurements students figure out what measurements they actual need to take.
- Recording measurements: Students record measurements on their cell phones.
- Internet research: Students revisit essential question to discuss what they need to do. They search the Internet to find equations for perimeter, area and volume.
- Calculations: They plug their measurements in to the formulas.
- Internet research: The students used their answers to search and see how much dechlorinator they need for the aquarium.
- Each student completes the math blog template and posts it to their math page of their blog. They work together during this process even though each is responsible for posting the template on their blog.
Math blog frame (sent via email ahead of lesson):Hi guys,
Here is a frame for writing in your math blog.
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Essential Question - How much dechlorinator do we need for our aquarium?
Today in math we studied length, perimeter, area and volume. Our team was team __________. We were measuring an aquarium with __________ in it. Here is our measurements:
Length (long side) ________cm
Length (short side) _____cm
Length of the height ________cm
Perimeter (side + side + side + side) _______cm
Area (side x side) ________cm2 (square centimeters like little squares at the bottom of a tank or checkerboard)
Volume (side x side x height) ________cm3 (cubic centimeters like how many cubes could fit in the tank)
Water amount (gallons, we'll use an online converter to figure out how many gallons equals our cubic centimeters) ______ gal
How much dechlorinator do we need? - if we use ______ for 1 gallon, we need ________ for our tank.
Actual student blog entry for this create and share lesson:
Today in math we studied length, perimeter, area and volume. Our team was: team void. We were measuring an aquarium with water in it.
Here is our measurements:
- Length (long side) 57 1/2cm
- Length (short side) 25 1/2cm
- Length of the height 25 1/2cm
- Perimeter (side + side + side + side)108 ½ cm
- Area (side x side)m2 (square centimeters like little squares at the bottom of a tank or checkerboard)
- Volume (side x side x height) 35626 ½ cm3 (cubic centimeters like how many cubes could fit in the tank)
- Water amount (gallons, we'll use an online converter to figure out how many gallons equals our cubic centimeters) 10. gal
Links to student math blogs:http://eruderoh.blogspot.com/p/math_5901.html
http://trae-ohjournal.blogspot.com/p/math.html
http://hweldonoh.blogspot.com/p/math.html
http://jhollingeroh.blogspot.com/p/math.html
