License Plate Combinations

When we come back from winter break we normally start our probability and statistics unit. I normally take a week for probability and a week for statistics which normally melts into three weeks. I've always thought nothing of changing it, but during winter break Dan Meyer posted "Plates Without States"  Since we were going over permutations and combinations I thought this would be an excellent way to get students thinking about how many different combinations there are in license plates and why they make them like that.

To start the lesson I had students go through Dan Meyer State-Plate Game.  Students were definitely engaged and loved playing against each other in their groups.

Next we talked about license plates and I separated it from combinations and permutations.

I gave all of the students a blank license plate and a card. The card had a name of a city or state and a population that students had to take in consideration.

Here are some of the license plates that students were working on.

When students were done with their license plates, they took a picture of their license plate and put it on SeeSaw. The last part they had to do was comment on three others the number of different combinations that they had with their license plate.

Here were a few students figuring out and commenting on other students post.

I like this activity much more and students realized how license plates play a role in local governments and how the population of an area can control the different license plates possible.

I posted almost all of them in the back of my room here are a bunch of different ones that are posted.

Finding Mr. President (Revised)

A while back I did this activity: http://new-to-teaching.blogspot.com/2015/12/finding-president-obama.html

Students had to find President Obama and his missing hot air balloon. Students had to write and graph inequalities. I did this for Algebra last year and thought it would be a great activity for Algebra 2 at the beginning of the year.

I use to cut out three 3 clues, but this year I changed it up a bit. I still gave students the direction sheet. I did change the other 3 clues to make them look more official.



I blacked out some of the information on the original document and added some of the text of the original clue to the bottom. Plus the top secret on the top looks very cool.



Next was an official letter.



Last was suppose to be a order fill out form from the FBI, I altered the text in the middle to make it a phone transcript.

Finding President Obama

Earlier this week I was trying to find a good transition activity between graphing one linear inequality to solving a system of linear inequalities.  I was searching trying to find one decent activity that led students to solve a system of linear inequalities. Luckily I found an awesome activity.  By Ms. Miller at High Tech High.

Obama Activity

In this activity students need to graph and shade clues on a map to determine the location of a missing hot air balloon.  The lesson plan and materials on her site listed above.  My students had a great time with this activity.

  

The best part of this activity was the homework:

Some students took this homework to the next level.  Writing a letter in math is a great assignment where they have to explain themselves.  Here is one example:

For next year I want to go above and beyond with this activity.  This year I had students in groups of 4, next year I want to move students into the Annex where there are tables and lay out maps and make it more of an escape room.  Using QR codes for the clues will help bring more engagement and activity. Students will go to the library and I will use the iPad and SMART Board to make it seem more real-life.