There's How Many Sugar Packets in a Coke!?!

As I begin this year, I am truly agonizing over my lesson plans - on a daily basis. I want to guide my students in so many ways. I want them to enjoy coming to school  (especially math class!) I want them to have lessons and experiences in my classroom that will help them truly understand the concepts we are studying. For me the conclusion I've come to is this. The problems need to be fewer, yet more involved. More applying what we know to make sense of what we don't know. That is why I am trying so hard to give the best lessons I can.

As noted in my last post, our first unit covers ratios. Thank goodness I have discovered the genius of Dan Meyer's Three Act Tasks. I used his task on Sugar Packets for the first time this week and LOVE IT! (The lesson plan can be found here.) Very engaging problem from both my point of view and for my students. In our discussions, students became very interested in how much sugar they are taking in. They wondered about things like "How much sugar should I have in one day?" and "Is all sugar bad for me?" They thought about their favorite foods and beverages and wanted to know the sugar content. At the end I asked them to find a food/drink that contained 50 packets of sugar. Amazing conversations and some deep thinkers emerged. I think we are off to a great start!

Because my students were given iPads this year, I am working in ways to teach them some of the technology as we work through the problem. They haven't had very much time to explore their new toys yet, so we opened up a pages document and learned some essential skills. Here are some of our accomplishments this first week of school.

1. We learned how to properly head our paper on the ipad.
2. We learned how to format text - change the font, the color, and size.
3. We learned how to insert a table and enter the information about the Sugar Packet problem to help us solve the problem.
4. We typed a conclusion that stated our final answer.
5. We also created a line chart with the same information to demonstrate what it would look like on a coordinate plane.

Examples:

Beginning with Ratios

It's back to school this week, and I am excited to get this year off to a good start with my sixth grade classes. I wanted to start our first unit in Math with ratios. I was surprised to find that most of my students claimed they didn't know the word ratio. I thought it would be a good idea to give them a visual representation that depicts the comparison of two elements. I know it will help them remember the concept better if they see it in action. So, we divided the class - boys on one side and girls on the other. I grabbed my iPad and took a picture to show them how we could compare the picture of the girls versus the picture of the boys. I quickly showed them how to correctly write ratios on paper, but then we spent some time thinking of different pictures we could make that would compare two or more items. It was great to see them so excited about math!

In my last class of the day, we found the ratio of boys to girls to be 8:16. Wow! 

Another great idea by one of my students - "Let's look at the ratio of neon-colored shoes to non-neon-colored shoes!"