World Record Watermelon Seed Spitting Maths

Here are some worksheets on MEAN, MEDIAN and MODE for middle school students. It also involves work with units (Metric/USA). But these are real numbers and the distances that 14 year olds can spit watermelon seeds is amaaaazing!

You can find the free pdf worksheets  (included below) here.

Other fun middle school math(s) worksheets in the Hot Heels series at TpT include Unit Rates, Angles, Ratios and Algebra.

Ask volunteers to see how far they can spit a seed. (WARNING: The volunteer must breath in through their nose before they spit. You don’t want them inhaling a seed.)

ANSWER SHEETS

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Mean, Median and Coffee: Busting an Urban Myth

 

A Fun Maths Exercise.

Students count steps.

No units of length used. 

You can find the free pdf worksheet  (included below) here.

Other fun middle school math(s) worksheets in the Hot Heels series at TpT include

Unit Rates, Angles, Ratios and Algebra.

There is a lot of maths and science behind coffee sloshing in a coffee mug. ‘The human stride has almost exactly the right frequency to drive the natural oscillations of coffee’ explains fluid physicists at the University of California at Santa Barbara. You will find their full explanation here.

 

How to Die from HOMEWORK!

We are good at graphs in maths, even funny graphs, but we often forget the power of story telling. Here’s a story about HOW NOT TO DO your MATHS HOMEWORK*.

*NOTE: Homework has never been recorded as the cause of death of a 13 year old.

Read longer version of Hugo Does His Homework here.

Lego Mean, Median, Mode

Students can calculate the Mean, Median and Mode using Lego. Here is the exciting part:

The lego stacks become the graph

START with 40 LEGO BRICKS

Draw a graph of No. of Blocks Vs No. of Prongs (per block) Make sure all blocks are the same height.

Start with 40 bricks.

Sort into Stacks to create graph of

 No. Prongs Vs No. Bricks

This is a close up of the stacks above.

The no. of bricks in each stack is written on top of the stack.

 

Mathspig does WORKSHEETS

Helloooo my lovely wombats, 

I started this blog several years ago because I found myself trying to convince teachers that maths could be fun, FUN, FUN at conferences. Sometimes it was like talking to a carton of eggs. So I had to show teachers that maths could be fun. With over 900,000 hits, you could say, my evil plan worked. After several years of blogging, I had an epiphany. Having studied maths at university for 5 years, then teaching maths  for 10 years up to and including Year 12, suddenly, I realised I never wanted to know the answer to any maths problem I solved. I simply wanted to get the answer right and move on.

I taught in some tough high schools. On my first day at one high school a student threw a bike off a roof. Now I understand their rage. I loved maths from day 1, but only a small % of students love maths for the challenge. It’s like Latin, a dead language, to many students and therefore ‘booooring’.

So now I concentrate on the TOUGH YEARS: Middle School. Students want to know the answer to the questions I ask. eg. HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE A 14 YO TO BLEED TO DEATH? It’s a great graph. They want to know the answer! I aim to make the maths REAL, RELEVANT and FUN.   Maths teachers don’t have time to be creative. So now I’m expanding my empire by creating the WORKSHEETS that I would have wanted for my challenging classes. My friend here, Roni, who is an unidentified marsupial and a little dodgy, will guide you through the worksheets.

I’m following the Common Core Standards for the USA. Hey! I’v done the math! 

So here are the worksheets that motivate students, even difficult students, to DO THE MATH or MATHS. The first one is free and then there’s a small fee and me and Roni are going to clear outa town with all the loot. Ha!

Hot heels 1: ANGLES The Angle of Death

Hot Heels 2: RATIOS Killer Heels vs Trainer No Brainer

Hot Heels 3: Unit Rate Faster than a speeding chicken!

Hot Heels 4: Mean, mode and coffee Oops! ………

………………………………………………………….I got the wobblies!

Hot Heels 5: ALGEBRA You can’t run;You can’t hide.

Me and Roni have some very interesting maths worksheets planned. And they didn’t even fall off the back of a truck!

Cheerio

Mathspig

MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig …………………………………………………. with Kerry Cue

Hellooooo My Little Sweeties,

There is so much maths you can do with m&ms, it’s hard to believe there is any other sort of maths.

You can study:

Counting, times tables, set theory, Bar graphs, Fractions, % and decimals, Mean, median, mode, and parabolas (using a really cool peg-powered catapult).

But my favouritest ,developed by Patrick Len, is using m&ms to demonstrate half life in radioactive substances and therefore write an exponential equation.

m+m ACTIVITY:

Throw a fixed no. m&ms on a table. Mathspig chose 128 m&ms for a very good reason. Eat the ones with the m showing. Count remainder. Throw again. Eat the ones with the m showing. Count remained. Keep doing this. You will end up with results like the following. (Not identical as chance is involved)

Wow! m&m’s and exponential equations. How yummy is that!!!!!!

More yummy maths:

m+m maths 1: find the volume using m+ms!

m+m maths 2: Guess, NO, calculate the number of m+ms in a jar!

m+m maths 3: how many m+ms will kill you?

m+m maths 4: How many m+ms will kill my dog?

m+m maths 5: how many m+ms will kill my cat?

m+m maths 6: How many m+ms will kill my pet rat?

m+ms maths 7: how many m+ms will kill my pet mouse?

Mmmmmmm! Can’t talk. Face full of chocolate.

Bye bye

Mathspig