Big Idea 1: BIG IDEA 1Archived

A variety of graph paper types for printing, including Cartesian, polar, engineering, isometric, logarithmic, hexagonal, probability, and Smith chart.

Type: Educational Software / Tool

Students calculate the tax, tip, and discount in real-world situations.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson unit is intended to help you assess whether students recognize relationships of direct proportion and how well they solve problems that involve proportional reasoning. In particular, it is intended to help you identify those students who use inappropriate additive strategies in scaling problems, which have a multiplicative structure, rely on piecemeal and inefficient strategies such as doubling, halving, and decomposition, and have not developed a single multiplier strategy for solving proportionality problems and see multiplication as making numbers bigger, and division as making numbers smaller.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will discover how much items would cost if they were to give gifts for 12 days. They will learn how to calculate and add sales tax to find a total.

Type: Lesson Plan

This 90-minute lesson (15-minute pre-lesson, 60-minute lesson and 15-minute follow up lesson or homework) asks students to analyze proportional relationships to solve real world and mathematical problems. The examples use recipes, paint, and buildings. Students begin by working individually, then in pairs or threes, and then as a whole class. Student will need calculators, large sheets of paper to make a poster and the lesson materials.

Type: Lesson Plan

Objective: Students will create a detailed scale drawing. Context: Students have used tools to measure length, solve proportions, and interpret scale drawings. They will continue to use ratio and proportion in the study of similar figures, percent, and probability.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will act as mathematicians and scientists as they use models, observations and space science concepts to perform calculations and draw inferences regarding a fictional solar system with three planets in circular orbits around a sun. Among the calculations are estimates of the size of the home planet (using a method more than 2000 years old) and the relative distances of the planets from their sun.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will solve problems involving sales tax and tips; students will apply the properties of operations with numbers in decimal, percent, and fraction form. Students will convert between numbers in any form as appropriate.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will participate in a simulated shopping experience where they choose items they would like to purchase from local sale advertisements. The students will be able to apply the percent formula and the percent of change formula to real world financial situations. Students will learn how to calculate percent discounts, their percent of savings, and tax. The students will analyze, compare, draw conclusions and explain in writing why specific types of discounts are the most advantageous given specific situations.

Type: Lesson Plan

"Students will work in groups to solve a real-world problem presented by the book: How Do You Lift A Lion? Using a toy lion and a lever, students will discover how much work is needed to raise the toy lion. They will use proportions to determine the force needed to lift a real lion" from TI World Math.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

In this engineering task, students will apply concepts of volume to decide what they will need to take on a 2-1/2 year journey to Mars. Then plan how to fit everything into a 1-cubic-meter box, using only a measuring tape, pencil and paper, and math.

Type: Teaching Idea

This resource demonstrates how to solve problems using proportions. It includes an instructional model, practice word problems, and an answer checking feature. The site also contains a glossary.

Type: Teaching Idea

• Given data about sharks and the amount of food they eat, students will be able to solve for the unknown in percentage problems.
• Given information about a shark's growth, students will be able to graph coordinates and interpret a linear graph.
• Given the conversion factor, students will be able to convert from metric to English units.

Type: Teaching Idea

This site explicitly outlines the steps for using the proportion method to solve three different kinds of percent problems. It also includes sample problems for practice determining the part, the whole or the percent.

Type: Tutorial

"Lesson 1 of two lessons teaches students about direct variation by allowing them to explore a simulated oil spill using toilet paper tissues (to represent land) and drops of vegetable oil (to simulate a volume of oil). Lesson 2 teaches students about inverse variation by exploring the relationship between the heights of a fixed amount of water poured into cylindrical containers of different sizes as compared to the area of the containers' bases." from Insights into Algebra 1 - Annenberg Foundation.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

This activity focuses on the use of percents in situations involving discounts and taxes. The students are assigned an interview to discover the use of percents in various careers. Working in pairs and using shopping catalogues, they will further their knowledge of percents by calculating discounts and taxes. To access their knowledge of percents, there is a writing activity and an assignment to create a menu with questions and an answer key.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

With a mouse, students will drag data points (with their error bars) and watch the best-fit polynomial curve form instantly. Students can choose the type of fit: linear, quadratic, cubic, or quartic. Best fit or adjustable fit can be displayed.

Type: Virtual Manipulative

This manipulative allows the user to enter multiple coordinates on a grid, estimate a line of best fit, and then determine the equation for a line of best fit.

Type: Virtual Manipulative