5 Ways to Spark Engagement in Math Class With the Iditarod Race

Are you interested in providing your middle school students with an interdisciplinary unit that is fun, covers your math standards, and actively involves students in their learning? It sounds like a win-win situation, right? If your answer is yes, I've got just the project for you! For the past three years, our sixth grade team has taught a five-week unit about the Iditarod Race. No, the race doesn't actually take five weeks to complete, but we begin our unit before the race starts to get students informed and excited for the actual start of the race.

Each of us (that is Math, Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science teachers) find ways to incorporate the Iditarod into lessons and activities. I want to share with you what takes place in my math class and hopefully ignite a spark for other teachers to try this unit too.

1. Race to Nome

This project was a new addition to our unit this year. My good friend and colleague, Laura Gilbert, is an amazing artist, so she made the map pictured below. Hand drawn on paper and attached to my magnetic whiteboard, it displays a map of the mushers' journey to Nome, Alaska. Laura actually made two maps, one for her classroom as well. Due to the fact that we are working with about 80 students, we thought it might get a little crowded to have all the students represented on just one map.

Race to Nome Map created by Laura Gilbert

Each student was given their own sled-dog magnet. This was a picture of a dog printed in color, laminated, cut out, and attached to a magnet. Students wrote their names on a sticky label on the front and we are hoping these will peel off and be able to reuse them next year. Here is a closer look at one of the dogs.

How do students earn miles as they race to Nome? The idea was that students needed to complete some short activities, usually reading a brief article and answering some questions, to earn miles. The more questions they completed and answered correctly, the closer they moved to their final destination. They needed to earn 4 miles to move from one checkpoint to the next, for a total of 100 miles to reach Nome. Students downloaded a document on their iPads, where they kept track of their answers. They used time during certain classes, study hall, or before/after school to regularly "check-in" to see their progress. I won't lie, this was a lot of work to keep track of, so we are investigating ways to make it easier for the future. I did eventually train the students who had already finished to check the answers of their classmates. Otherwise, I spent all of study hall checking students' answers.

What I really loved about this part of the project was that it was largely created by the students. In the two weeks leading up to the beginning of the race, we asked students to research the Iditarod in their technology class. They worked in small groups and were given the choice about what to focus their research on. We suggested topics such as mushers, the dogs, the history of the Iditarod, the equipment used by mushers, awards and prizes, etc. Then the students used the information gained to create an activity that other students could complete. Most students posted a link to an article and asked a related question. The map was a nice visual touch for students to watch their dog move towards the finish line.

2. Fantasy Iditarod Team

Another fun and new activity this year - the Fantasy Iditarod team. In the past we've had students choose one rookie musher and one veteran musher to follow during the race. We wanted to revamp this, because when your musher drops out of the race or gets scratched, it's just not that fun anymore. Students instead chose six racers, two had to be veterans of the race, two had to be rookies, and two had to be women mushers.

Every couple of days we had students fill out a Fantasy Iditarod worksheet, writing their mushers' names, their position in the race at the checkpoint, and points earned (see above). Points were awarded as follows:

We created a spreadsheet for students to use to find out each musher's time into each checkpoint. At first we tried using the Iditarod website, but it listed mushers in order of time leaving the checkpoint, not entering it.

As students submitted their Fantasy Iditarod worksheet, we checked for accuracy and entered the standings into a spreadsheet (can you tell we like spreadsheets)? Students loved checking the sixth grade website to see their standings.

3. Daily Math Problem

At the beginning of each week, I emailed students their Math Musher Log. They downloaded this into their Notability app so students could write on it, and we began each day by completing the daily problem. These could be focused on particular skills you want students to practice or review. This year I chose to focus certain week's problems on a particular topic. For instance, one week we completed problems each day that were about the cost of running a kennel.

Sometimes I added additional problems, like over the weekend or Spring Break. These were chances for students to earn some extra credit. If the problems were harder, I included some "hints" to help them get started in the right direction.

4. Men Vs. Women Pie Chart Poster

For a mini statistics project, we analyzed the percentage of men and women in the Iditarod race. We also wanted to see how this has changed over time, so we also determined the percentage of men and women from the Iditarod race 30 years ago.

In the past, I've had students gather this data on their own, by writing the name of each musher, their gender, and age (for another project). This proved to be very time-consuming and prone to student errors, especially when they would guess at some of the information. So, I made a spreadsheet.

This spreadsheet listed information about this year's race, so I did have students go to the Iditarod website and look at the race archives to gather the data for the race from 1985. Once we knew how many men and how many women were in the race for 1985 and 2015, we created a poster to share our data. Part of the criteria was for students to make 3 comments/observations - one about the raw numbers, one about the percentages, and a prediction for the race 30 years in the future. Here is the example I made to share with students.

Do you know what was really great about the Iditarod race from 30 years ago? Only 5 women were in the race, but it was won by a woman!

5. Statistics Project - Age of Mushers

We also completed a statistics project that covered most of the statistics standards for sixth grade by studying the age of the Iditarod mushers. Using the spreadsheet data above, we found the mean, median, mode, range, quartiles, and mean absolute deviation of the ages of the mushers. We used this data to create a dot plot, box plot, and a histogram. 

I had students use a calculator to find the sum of all the mushers' ages. There were 79 mushers! Believe me, they made many mistakes in adding all those numbers. But they kept on trying until they reached the magic number. Finally, I showed them how their Numbers spreadsheet will calculate all of these formulas for us, so we were able to check our work. They were pretty astonished at what can be done with a spreadsheet. I also taught students how to use the spreadsheet to create a Dot Plot and we used this website to create our Box Plot. 

Here is a student example of the Age of Mushers project. I notice the Dot Plot doesn't look exactly like what we created in class. Something must have changed in the conversion process, but this is a good example of what we accomplished.

Click here to see the student example above

I hope you've enjoyed reading about some of the Iditarod projects we completed and possibly found some inspiration for your own classroom!

Kahoot! Great Formative Assessment Tool

I was introduced to an app this past summer that I thought my students would enjoy a great deal. It was easy to use, which is a high priority for reaching all learners. It was a lot of fun, a necessary ingredient for any middle school classroom, and it was definitely competitive. I wrote the app down in my notes, but with all the numerous new ideas I wanted to try out, this one didn't come to mind, until...

One of my math classes is learning to add and subtract with integers. This is their first foray into the crazy world of positive and negative numbers, and sometimes they look at me like I've lost my mind. Who can blame them? Imagine hearing for the first time that you can take a negative number and subtract another negative number and end up at a positive number. Seriously!?! Negative ten subtract negative fifteen and end up at positive five? -10-(-15)=5 Let's just say it's taken many days of discussion, concrete examples, repeating the rules, and I really think they will believe me soon.

In all seriousness, I wanted some data to look at that would give me a clear picture of each child, but I wanted it fast. After all, I need to make quick decisions based on this data. So I pulled out my ace in the hole, a game called Kahoot! On my computer, I created a series of 5 integer addition sentences and 5 integer subtraction sentences for the game. My students used their iPad to chime in (sort of like a clicker). The timed questions were displayed on an overhead screen using my Apple TV. Students needed a game pin number to enter the game. Other than that, they didn't need to enter an email address or create a password. Easy, right? Answer correctly, you earn points. Answer fast and correctly, you earn more points. Once everyone has responded to the question, each player will know if they answered correctly. Immediate feedback! A leaderboard shows the top five players/scores at the end of each round, leading to high engagement and fun competition.

Best of all, when the game ended, I downloaded a spreadsheet that listed for each child: number of correct answers, score, and a color-coded list for each question. Correct answers were highlighted in green and incorrect answers in red. It also listed the score received for each question and the amount of time it took to answer the question.

But wait, it gets even better! Because the game was only 10 questions and the students really loved it, we took it twice. (Their motivation: beat the winner of the first game. My motivation: See if they improved from the first game.) I was very pleasantly surprised to find only one student's score remained the same, while the other fifteen students improved their scores, some rather dramatically.

I've witnessed many positive aspects to using Kahoot! in the classroom. I will be looking for other ways to incorporate its use, maybe some peer discussion questions or for learning a small number of facts quickly. A detailed tutorial for creating a Kahoot! game will be coming soon.

Example Kahoot! question

Creative Geometry Maps Assessment

We have completed a Geometry chapter from our textbook that covers the basics and includes a lot of vocabulary. The material starts easy (points, lines, line segments), but it gets complicated (vertical angles, adjacent angles, complementary angles, supplementary angles, the sum of the degrees in any polygon)... It proved to be difficult material for sixth-graders. After giving the textbook chapter test, I searched for an alternative test that would be a creative outlet for students and let them prove their understanding of the material in a unique way. I came across the idea for a Geometry Map Project at this site. Rather than have students create a three-dimensional scene, I opted this time to have them create a map on graph paper. Check out the results for yourself; here's a sampling. Awesome work!

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!"

Class Picture

I found this idea on Pinterest by photographer Christine Kay. Here is a link to her original idea. I knew I had to do it as soon as I saw it. What a great and unique way to remember the students in my homeroom this year. I sent it to the parents of my "kids," and they loved it too.

I am no photographer, so mine does not look as good as the original, but I was happy with the outcome. It took some guess and test, but I ended up making a collage of the pictures on a document. I filled in the background as black and kept the pictures a little apart, so it looks like a thin border between the pictures.

Memory Pages

I find it's always a little more difficult to keep students engaged those very last few class periods in the school year. I find myself searching for something that will keep the natives from getting too restless. At our school, students had to return their much loved ipads and some (or most) were beginning to think that summer had already begun. This year I ended up creating my own worksheet, a memory page for them to keep as a record of our year together. It turned out to be a pretty successful win-win situation for everyone. I was happy that they took their time to write down their favorites, funny moments, and even a "shining star" moment. Students were happy to chat with friends, reminisce about the year, and just decorate their page when they were done writing.

Here is a picture of Emily and her finished page. See my Teachers Pay Teachers store page if you would like to download and use the page too.