Desmos Classroom Activities

At Desmos, our mission is to help every student learn math and love learning math. With that in mind, we’ve assembled a collection of unique and engaging digital activities, which are free for you and your students. Access to most activities requires a free account. Permitted use: a) as an end user, for your personal, non-commercial use or (b) as a teacher, for academic use by you and your students in individual classes

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Homework/Assignment, Interactive, Lesson, Lesson Plan

Author: Desmos Inc.

Modeling: Having Kittens

This lesson unit is intended to help teachers assess how well students are able to: interpret a situation and represent the constraints and variables mathematically; select appropriate mathematical methods to use; make sensible estimates and assumptions; investigate an exponentially increasing sequence; and communicate their reasoning clearly.

Material Type: Assessment, Lesson Plan

STEM Inquiry Lesson Template

This template supports STEM teachers and librarians in working collaboratively to create lessons that build science practice and STEM inquiry skills in alignment with state and national science standards, and that address the Common Core literacy shifts around close reading and building textual evidence.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Authors: Megan Simmons, Cynthia Jimes, Joanna Schimizzi, Letha Goger

Kitty Konundrum: The Environmental Impact of Feral Cat Reproduction

This lesson is an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the feral cat issue in Hawaii. It incorporates problem-based learning to estimate cat reproduction, research the environmental impact of feral cats, and compose research-based arguments for solutions

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Authors: Sara Layton, Tamar Posner

Steps to Solving Equations

This lesson unit is intended to help teachers assess how well students are able to: form and solve linear equations involving factorizing and using the distributive law. In particular, this unit aims to help teachers identify and assist students who have difficulties in: using variables to represent quantities in a real-world or mathematical problem and solving word problems leading to equations of the form px + q = r and p(x + q) = r.

Material Type: Assessment, Lesson Plan

Drawing to Scale: Designing a Garden

This lesson unit is intended to help assess how well students are able to interpret and use scale drawings to plan a garden layout. This involves using proportional reasoning and metric units.

Material Type: Assessment, Lesson Plan

3.MD How Heavy?

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important aspects of the task and its potential use.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Illustrative Mathematics

3.MD India's Bathroom Tiles

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important aspects of the task and its potential use.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Illustrative Mathematics

Student Portfolio: Cyberbullying

This is a blank template for students to use for their research portfolios. Students will create an OER Commons account, access this resource, make a copy and rename the resource, and then add their own assignments and projects to the template.

Material Type: Assessment

Author: Sara Layton

The Argumentative Research Project: A Step-by-Step Course

This resource is designed to walk students through the process of completing a research project in any field of study. It covers the earliest stages of brainstorming and discussing, continues through researching and compiling sources; writing, documenting, revising, and polishing a paper; and finally presenting the research topic to a wider audience in a professional manner. The focus is on MLA format, though the course could be modified for other formats. The first unit is an introduction to the project. It asks students to draw on knowledge of issues affecting their own community and world to help generate discussion that could eventually lead to a research topic.

Material Type: Assessment, Full Course, Homework/Assignment, Lecture, Lesson Plan, Reading

Author: Sara Layton

Math, Grade 6, Rate, Exploring Rate In The Context Of Music

In this lesson, students are introduced to rate in the context of music. They will explore beats per minute and compare rates using mathematical representations including graphs and double number lines.Key ConceptsBeats per minute is a rate. Musicians often count the number of beats per measure to determine the tempo of a song. A fast tempo produces music that seems to be racing, whereas a slow tempo results in music that is more relaxing. When graphed, sets with more beats per minute have smaller intervals on the double number line and steeper lines on the graph.Goals and Learning ObjectivesInvestigate rate in music.Find beats per minute by counting beats in music.Represent beats per minute on a double number line and a graph.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Modeling and Simulation for High School Teachers: Principles, Problems, and Lesson Plans

A collaboration between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the CK-12 Foundation, this book provides high school mathematics and physics teachers with an introduction to the main principles of modeling and simulation used in science and engineering. An appendix of lesson plans is included.

Material Type: Lesson Plan, Teaching/Learning Strategy, Textbook

10X Bigger!

Students will explore multi-digit numbers and the relationship between ones, tens and hundreds; a digit in one place is 10x the digit in the place to its right. Students will use their bodies to represent digits in multi-digit numbers up to the hundredths place and compare these numbers using <, =, >. Students will use their bodies as multi-digit numbers to add and subtract.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: Admin