Day 158 Vacation Project Day 2

6th Grade Math Standards: 6.NS.2 Fluently add, subtract, multiply and divide multi-digit decimals using the standard algorithm.

The Objective: Multiply, divide, and subtract decimal numbers in a real-world context.

Agenda:

1. Weekly Quizzes returned to students
2. Flight, hotel, and rental car prices locked in (if not already)
3. Brainstorm ten activity ideas in the journal (no computer needed during this time as it will distract students from creativity)
4. Discuss with partner and do 3 of the ten activities.
5. Pay for the 3 activities (look up prices online)
6. Add the total miles from the hotel to each activity
7. Find the cost of gas 

The Assessment: At the end of the day I verified that students put in a cost for each of their three activities as well as the part of the project that should have been completed yesterday. I did not assess the mileage piece but intend on doing that part tomorrow. A couple students are struggling with subtracting a decimal number from a whole number.

Glass Half-Full Take: The connections to mathematics in the real-world are crystal clear in doing this project. Students that are going outside of the United States are finding that their distances from the hotel to the activities are in kilometers instead of miles and many of their prices are listed in Euros as opposed to dollars. This opens up numerous more opportunities to illustrate why ratios and proportions are relevant to our projects. Selfishly, I happen to be traveling to Madrid and Barcelona this summer and a couple of my soccer enthusiasts are going in that direction on their vacations. I'm actually interested in stealing some of their ideas for my own trip.

One Regret: I wish that we had added on the sheet that lists the activities an address and also an address for the hotel that they are staying at. It would make searching for places much easier. I lose track of the fact that these students have probably never needed to use the GPS to get from Point A to Point B because an adult is usually taking care of this skill. Therefore I am needing to teach students how to use google maps (something I do at least once per week in order to find a new place).

Link of the Day: Speaking conversions versus the dollar, here is a look at mathenisms (that isn't a real word...at least not yet) of the UK versus the U.S.