Integers [temperatures]

Yesterday, I co-taught an integers activity with a colleague. It was a blast! Before I share the lesson, I'll back up and give the backstory on the context. During winter break, I ventured over to Brian Head, Utah to do some snowboarding. I knew it was going to be cold so I went into the trip with the intention to frequently check my phone's weather app and take screenshots of temperatures. I figured I might be able to make an activity out of it and/or use it with 6th graders at some point when discussing integers. (official lesson page with resources)

My fellow displayed this slide and asked, "What do you notice? What do you wonder?"
(the 3 in the lower right is the slide number)

Students noticed and wondered great things. Here are just a few:

• What's the temperature at 9am?
• Why is it warmer on the days it is supposed to snow?
• Thursday is the only day with a negative temperature.
• It's 4:13 am.
• It's zero degrees at 5am.
• It's cold!
• How cold does it get?

We established that -4 degrees Fahrenheit is cold, below zero, and the temperature at 4:13 am. Let's plot this on a vertical number line today, just like a thermometer. Does -4 degrees go above or below -5 on the vertical number line?

I told students that we're going to show them five more times and their temperatures throughout the day. Most importantly, I asked students to first predict the temperatures at those given times (tap into student intuition). Here are the times:

• 6:00 am
• 7:00 am
• 9:30 am
• 2:30 pm
• 8:00 pm

Essentially, we're tapping into student intuition, a free resource in our classrooms. I want them to predict the story of temperatures and degree change for the remainder of the day. If anyone has experienced winter weather, they know it gets cold at night and warmer during the day, possibly peaking midday. It's a small part of the activity to keep it moving along and gain student investment.

Here come the temperatures. For each time and temperature revealed, here's what were going to do:

• Plot the temperature on your vertical number line.
• Find the degree change between the last temperature given.
• At the end, we'll find the largest difference in temperature during the day.

Here's a few of our whiteboard representations:

This was a simple and fun context to work with integers and the vertical number line. I also took screenshots of the temperatures in Celsius and might be able to make a Math 8 activity out of it. Here's the desmos rough draft.

The best part for me (as a teacher) was listening to students make sense of the temperature changes and explaining their thinking. There were so many opportunities to help students with their vocabulary. For example, when asked, "what's the difference between 12 degrees and -8 degrees?" it was interesting to hear how students wanted to change -8 to a positive in order to add it to 12. There was our intro to absolute value and a number's distance from zero. Love it!

One student came up to me on his way out and showed me his paper,
"Hey Mr. Stadel, I predicted the temperature correctly for each time!"
High-five!
I asked, "Do you want to pick my Powerball lottery numbers for this week?"
He declined. Drat.

Again, official lesson page with resources here.

Brrrrrrr! it's cold,
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