Milk does a body good ... unless, of course, someone is lactose intolerant. Pupils play the role of pharmaceutical scientists in a guided inquiry lab about lactase. Lab groups collaborate to learn more about lactose intolerance, how...

How did scientists determine the cause of illness before technology? Science scholars play the role of medical researcher in an engaging guided inquiry activity. Using observations, technical reading, and Punnett squares, learners...

How much sugar is in one bottle? Pupils use double number line diagrams to determine the amount of sugar in a 1L bottle of cola. The teacher leads a discussion on ways that double number lines can be of assistance in solving a...

With many factors leading to a great athlete, does height make Usain Bolt unfairly fast? Middle schoolers conduct analysis to change the running distance of the Olympic races to be proportional to the height of the participants. They...

Your learners will be tantalized by this inquiry-based, collaborative activity as they discover how to write an equation that represents the height of an ice cream cone. Given the scenario based on the poem, "Eighteen Flavors," and...

This lesson combines math, visual arts, and language arts activities that all focus on the making, and baling of hay. The activities can be adjusted to address different age ranges. Most of the activities focus on gaining...

This resource will knock your "sox" off! It comes with so many worksheets, projects, and other attachments that help you prepare your mathematicians to see positive and negative integers in the real world, including the White Sox stadium...

Which truck should the fire department purchase? Given a scenario with three different ladder trucks, pupil compare the height the ladders will reach. They determine which ladder trucks meet the cities' requirements and provide a...

Plant the fruits of trigonometry. Pairs work through the process of finding the best place to plant fruit trees on a piece of property. The scholars must take into consideration the location of the property and the solar zenith angle. To...

Find the height from afar. Teams role play as summer interns to find the height of a set of windows from the outside. Scholars must first determine how to find the height with the available tools. After determining a strategy involving...

Pairs or small groups work together to determine the height of a tree using similar triangles. Learners make a judgement which direction to let a tree fall to avoid hitting any structures. They then write letters to the principal...

It's all about location, location, location. Small groups work to find the best spot for a rec center to serve three different communities. Learners construct the inscribed and circumscribed circles of a triangle to find the best place....

Cover the floor with math. Pupils work to determine the proper shape to cover a kitchen floor. They first determine the number of tiles to purchase and configure their placement to reduce the amount of waste. Teams finish by creating a...

Slow the spread of disease by slowing disease carriers in their tracks. Learners explore just how they might accomplish this as they experiment with the life cycle of a mosquito under different conditions. Scholars design and conduct...

Challenge your classes to design and market a new product. Collaborative groups use geometry skills to create packaging for their products. Finally, they plan a marketing strategy to present to a marketing specialist.

Why is lactase important? Biology scholars explore enzyme function in a structured inquiry lab. The activity tasks lab groups with observing how temperature and pH affect enzyme activity, as well as determining which milk products...

Explore the measures of central tendency through a challenging task. Given values for the mean, median, mode, and range, collaborative groups create a set of data that would produce those values. They then critique other answers and...

Discover relationships between linear and nonlinear functions. Initially, a set of data seems linear, but upon further exploration, pupils realize the data can model an infinite number of functions. Scholars use multiple representations...

Explore the effect of outliers through an analysis of mean, median, and standard deviation. Your classes examine and compare these measures for two groups. They must make sense of a group that has a higher mean but lower median compared...

Who knew the sum of a number's digits gives such interesting information? The 18th installment of a 21-part module has scholars investigate division by three and nine. After looking at several examples, they develop divisibility tests...

Class members come up with a hypothesis on the number of decimal digits in the product of two decimals. Learners work in groups to complete several decimal multiplication problems. The results help groups develop a conjecture on the...

Ratios may not be created equal, but they are equivalent. Pupils learn the theorem relating equivalent ratios and equal values in the eighth segment in a series of 29. Classmates use the theorem to determine whether ratios within...

Discover how trend lines can be useful in understanding relationships between variables with a lesson that covers how to informally fit a trend line to model a relationship given in a scatter plot. Scholars use the trend line to make...

Identify the identity. Learners first solve equations to find the number of solutions. Scholars then determine if given equations are always, sometimes, or never true, leading to the concept of identities.