This task presents a real world application of finite geometric series. The context can lead into several interesting follow-up questions and projects. Many drugs only become effective after the amount in the body builds up to a certain level. This can be modeled very well with geometric series.

In this activity, students construct their own pinhole camera to observe the behavior of light.

By signing up with your email address and clicking the yellow subscribe button, you will receive this great design thinking project that your students will love! It is part of a design thinking toolkit and includes a free design thinking project, an eBook, and a suite of assessments. You will also receive a weekly email with free, members-only access to the latest blog posts, videos, podcasts and resources to help you boost creativity and spark innovation in your classroom.

The power point will provide strategies and to add skills to our toolkits that can be used to help engage our students in the use of 21CC skills- one of the focuses this year is Critical Thinking.  The deBono’s Thinking Hat strategy is a great way to help us think differently and critically.  As well, teachers will find a Critical Thinking (Socratic/Scholarly Discussion) Rubric, 3 more various Critical Thinking rubrics, Critical Thinking Exit Slips, a deBonos thinking hat explanation, a deBonos Thinking Hats worksheet, a PMI (Plus-Minus-Interesting) document and activities associated with ctritical thinking.

Students practice crossing from one family to the next in counting forward with this concentration game.

This word problem requires students to create expressions to calculate gas milage for a vehicle.

One common mistake students make when dividing fractions using visuals is the confusion between remainder and the fractional part of a mixed number answer.

Students gain experience with the software/system design process, closely related to the engineering design process, to solve a problem. First, they learn about the Mars Curiosity rover and its mission, including the difficulties that engineers must consider and overcome to operate a rover remotely. Students observe a simulation of a robot being controlled remotely. These experiences guide discussion on how the design process is applied in these scenarios. The lesson culminates in a hands-on experience with the design process as students simulate the remote control of a rover. In the associated activity, students gain further experience with the design process by creating an Android application using App Inventor to control one aspect of a remotely controlled vehicle. (Note: The lesson requires a LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Education NXT base set.)

The purpose of this task is to introduce or reinforce the concept of a function, especially in a context where the function is not given by an explicit algebraic representation. Further, the last part of the task emphasizes the significance of one variable being a function of another variable in an immediately relevant real-life context.

Students pretend they are agricultural engineers during the colonial period and design a miniature plow that cuts through a "field" of soil. They are introduced to the engineering design process and learn of several famous historical figures who contributed to plow design.

By tracing the movement of radiation released during an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, students see how air pollution, like particulate matter, can become a global issue.

The purpose of this task is to help students explore the meaning of fraction division and to connect it to what they know about whole-number division.

This task asks the students to solve a real-world problem involving unit rates (data per unit time) using units that many teens and pre-teens have heard of but may not know the definition for. While the computations involved are not particularly complex, the units will be abstract for many students.

Students explore the many different ways that engineers provide natural lighting to interior spaces. They analyze various methods of daylighting by constructing model houses from foam core board and simulating the sun with a desk lamp. Teams design a daylighting system for their model houses based on their observations and calculations of the optimal use of available sunlight to their structure.

This feature article from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Earth Observatory discusses the use of satellite imagery to evaluate desertification which is occurring in the Sahel, a region of central African savannah that forms the boundary between the Sahara Desert to the north and the wetter, more fertile regions to the south. Topics include the use of Very High Resolution Radiometer (VHRR) data, obtained from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) meteorological satellites, to develop a vegetation index, and exactly how the term 'desertification' should be defined in order to distinguish temporarily degraded land from that which has permanently lost productivity.