Tuesday, I was on my way to BTSA and my subconscious screamed something at me. Find Dan Meyer's
Stacking Cup lesson. Seriously, go read his post right now. I hadn't read this post for over a year now and I had to get my lessons ready for the next couple of days as my Algebra classes finished up
Pixel Pattern. I was on the road dreading the idea of sitting through a couple hours of BTSA, so I asked Dan if he had the link to his lesson since it wasn't in my bookmarks (that was silly of me) and he came through like a champ! Seriously, check out
his post. I'm promoting his blog post more than anything further I have to say here.
First, by all means, spend about $10 and do the lesson with your kiddos. This is one of those 3 Act lessons that just screams "hands-on" activity with your kids. It's tough to capture the overall excitement and energy with a video. If you can't do the "hands on" with your kids or you want to be environmentally friendly, here's my version of the
Styrofoam Cup 3 Act lesson: a cheap backup.
It felt most natural to stage this so the cups stacked to the top of the door frame. Even then, I'm not convinced my Act 1 screams the question I'm looking for, "How many cups will stack to the top of the door frame?"
Enough about me and the video, to my classroom with the students. Dan's got a great script for you to follow, so do it! One of my classes was actually able to finish writing their rules before the bell on Friday so we had time to actually stack cups. Check out their rules and predictions for stacking cups to my height.
We started stacking with the lowest number and went from there. The kids went bonkers. Each group thought they were the best, but knew that they all couldn't be correct. When we revisit the lesson this next week, we'll be discussing where groups went wrong in order to learn from those mistakes. Watch Styrofoam Cups - Act 3 Stadel to find out who won. But I recommend you watch the
door task also.
Styrofoamed out,
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Thanks for sharing this. I had always talked about this problem in the context of finding how how long a bag would have to be to hold X cups (as opposed to how high it would go).
ReplyDeleteIt is a good point that some activities videos are good for but for others, actually doing it is best.
Was it rough having to break up the lesson? Or did it build anticipation for Act 3?
ReplyDeleteYes, it was rough. It was rough especially since we paused the lesson on a Friday. There was definitely a drop in interest come Monday morning, but I did hear the reviving, "Oh, yea!" from a decent number of students. Understandably, it can be difficult for an 8th grader to get excited about much come Monday morning. Let's face it, Monday ends their weekend and brings them back to reality that they're supposed to be a "student".
DeleteOnce they revisited their notes, measurements, and woke up, the conversations, conjectures, and calculations improved. Eventually we got some anticipation which definitely turned into some excitement. The payoff (stacking the cups to my height) was a blast and made some kids' Monday.
Hi, Thanks for posting all this. I had about 10 minutes to spare in Friday's class so I played Act 1 and asked the kids to go home and make estimates. They looked up standard door sizes and metal kickboard sizes and one kid went to the store to figure out the size of the cups/lips. When they came in today and wrote all of their estimates on the board, I then showed them the Act 2 info, and asked them to take another look at it. They were so psyched to see how close some were. Then it lead into a great linear relationship discussion particularly about whether the y-int should be the height of the first cup, the lip, cup-lip, zero, and what each of those meant to application and the graph. So rich, even though we didn't have time to do the hands on part. Next time I'll have to make sure to plan for that.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear. Sounds like you've got some resourceful students. Way to support them! Thanks for sharing!
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