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!

Leader in Me ~ 7 Habits

Recently our school hosted a Community Leader in Me Day. We invited members of the community to participate in learning about the 7 Habits and witness our student leaders in action. What an amazing sight to see my sixth grade students taking such leadership roles! They took care of refreshments, directed people to rooms around the school, ushered people from groups that were too full to ones that needed more participants. And the list goes on and on... They are amazing leaders! Here are some pictures taken from that night.

Helping with refreshments

Teaching about being proactive

Talking with community members

Directing people to their rooms

To get my room ready for this event, I added a few new items to my walls and windows to freshen up the atmosphere. The theme for my room is "Begin With the End in Mind." I focused on knowing where we want to go and having a plan to get there. So, I used transportation to illustrate this point. For instance, my daughter, Jaime, drew a compass to remind us that we need to head in the right direction to achieve our goals. She also drew a car next to a phrase that says, "Small changes can make huge destination differences."

Jaime also made me a hot air balloon with the title, "Leaders Rise to the Top!"

I handed out puzzle pieces to students that I had cut out of a poster board. It says Begin With the End in Mind. Once students decorated their individual pieces, I assembled the puzzle and glued it together. Here is the final result.

Behind my 7 Habits Tree poster I added a map to remind us we need to know the direction we are headed and have a plan to get there. We added a three-dimensional touch with some tissue paper flowers.

Overall, we had a very successful event. I am definitely looking forward to seeing the continued student leadership in our school. 

Metric Measurement Conversions

I taught one of my classes this week how to convert between metric measurements. Unfortunately, the metric system is rarely used here in the United States, and students are not often exposed to opportunities to use and be aware of metric units. Inches and feet and miles they know, but can students relate to items that might be a millimeter thick or a centimeter wide? This is where we started - a dime has about the thickness of a millimeter and their textbook weighs about one kilogram. Our conversation became more lively and creative as we continued along this path, as students tried to guess what item I was about to mention. I think it left students with a better understanding of the greatness (and smallness) of these units.

I created the image above to help students learn the information and keep it in an organized representation. Originally they drew their own stair steps in their math notebooks, but I created this one to make sure my students have a legible and neat copy too. To remember the order of the steps we memorized the sentence, "Kangaroos hop down mountains drinking chocolate milk." I found that tip several years ago in my first year of teaching and have remembered it ever since. (I know from experience it is easy to remember!) Each letter stands for the prefix of one of the metric units. Though we don't often use the hecto- or deca-/deka, we keep it on the steps to keep the relationship intact between units. Each step is labeled with the prefix and a number for that unit. Notes are included that remind students that as they move down the stairs to the right, the decimal point moves to the right for the same number of places. For instance, converting from centimeters to millimeters is just one step to the right, so move the decimal point just one place to the right (30 centimeters would equal 300 millimeters).

All in all, a pretty successful lesson once the graphic organizer was utilized. With more practice and exposure we just might become experts in the metric system.

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.