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Using Ratios to Taste the Rainbow (pdf file)
Goal: At the end of the activity, the students will know that the actual ratio of colored skittles is not what the Mars company claims. They will also be able to calculate different ratios and percentages associated with the number of colored skittles given to their group.
KY Standards: MA-7-NPO-S-RP1
Students will apply ratios and proportional reasoning to solve real-world problems (e.g., percents, sales tax, discounts, rate).
The Mars company has been lying to us about the ratio of colored skittles?
2 comments:
This lesson requires the use of a SMART Board!
Skittles - 7th grade. Low expectations and lots of wasted time. They are just clueless.
Go to the web site and look under "Philosophy of Teaching". It's filled with comments by teachers about their teaching philosophies.
They are all relative. They are all based on what they think they can or can't do personally, not on what could be done by the school system as a whole. The Algebra Cubed Project reinforces this teacher-centric approach to solving educational problems. Teacher union - administration battles also reinforce this viewpoint.
Rather than tackle fundamental system-wide assumptions, expectations, and absolute results, they focus only on the relative incremental change they hope to provide. If they don't see any external framework for expectations (more than trivial state standards), then they will be satisfied with process and small relative improvements.
If there are no external absolute goals, then that opens the door for all sorts of silly, time-wasting class projects. What I find interesting is that these things all have to be done in class, usually in groups. It wastes time and some kids will not do the work. This is OK for them, because their goal is only trivial low state standards.
Minimum state cut-offs become maximum goals, and only those kids who are math brains or who get help outside of school will ever get to the real math track in high school.
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