Another post from Tap Into Teen Minds. Enjoy!
Connecting Ratios, Rates & Proportions to Linear Equations
The Super Bear 3 Act Math Task by Dan Meyer was one of the first 3 act math tasks I had attempted after being introduced to this innovative approach to teaching math. While I enjoyed using this task and sharing it out to my colleagues at professional development sessions, I found that many had questions with regards to how they could stretch this task out to more than one learning goal. I’ve tried to provide some suggestions via a Super Bear Task Template that could be useful when trying this task for the first time.
Act 1: Introducing the Task
Show the students the first clip:
Get your students thinking about some possible questions they might have. While a number of different questions are likely, we are going to try to go in the direction of determining:
How many mini-bears (and regular bears) would it take to make a super bear?
Act 2: Give Some Information
After deciding on a question to answer and asking students what information they might need/want, they can then check out these videos:
Weight of 10 Mini-Bears
Weight of 1 Super Bear
I usually have students focus on mini-bears first, then we talk about regular bears. Also gives an opportunity for some “practice’ working with ratios/rates and equations after consolidating the first question. When ready, you can show students this:
Weight of 10 Regular Bears
After students have discussed with a neighbour, I give them a task template to help them organize their thinking:
The intention of the task template is to try and model the interconnectedness of mathematics and in particular, between ratios/rates/proportions and linear relations. I use this task early in the year and thus a lot of scaffolding techniques are used. I personally aim to gradually release the responsibility to my students as we engage in proportional reasoning problems throughout the year.
Act 3: Watch the Solutions
Number of mini-bears
Number of regular bears
Check out the original task by Dan as well as his sequel here.
Originally Created & Shared By: Dan Meyer
License: CC-BY 3.0
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