Big! Small! Fast! Slow! From the formation of a galaxy to the interactions between your cells, many natural phenomena that are hard to picture with the human eye. Some, like cell interactions, are hard to imagine because they are small and fast. Others, like the movements of objects in the solar system, are hard to imagine because they are big and slow. Models can help you visualize phenomena that go beyond the limits of your senses. Over the course of the project, the students develop a visual to make a hard-to-see process in our universe easier to imagine and understand.

Memoir of a Student: I Am Malala

How are students’ lives different in different parts of the world? Memoirs are true-life stories written by the people who lived them. To start, the students read the memoir of a person whose story and efforts are so inspiring and heroic that she won the Nobel Peace Prize before she even finished high school! While you read her incredible journey in the memoir, I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai, the students learned more about her and identify her point of view and purpose, as well as the overall theme of the book. To show what the students learned, the students wrote their own personal memoirs that were an important part of their life, or a memorable moment. After they wrote their memoir they created a collage that included an analysis and images to support your ideas of either Malala's memoir or their own.

My Memoir

Memoir Collages

Memoir Presentations

Introducing Ratios

In this unit, the students are introduced to ratios, and come to recognize when two ratios are or are not equivalent. They learn to understand and use the terms “ratio,” “rate,” “equivalent ratios,” “per,” “at this rate,” “constant speed,” and “constant rate.” Throughout the unit, they represent ratios as expressions, and represent equivalent ratios with double number line diagrams, tape diagrams, and tables. They apply the representations and terms from this unit to reason about situations involving color mixtures, recipes, unit pricing, and constant speed.