Probability Through Caine's Arcade

First day of our probability unit we watched this video.

Day 1: I chose this video, because most of my students are hispanic and I think the biggest thing in our school right now is empathy. We talked about having games of chance like in the video they just watched, what does chance mean? We did our first section of probability and told them they were going to create their own games, just like Caine did. 

We did a 5 question check for understanding and told the students they needed to finish the bottom half of the checklist today.

Here are other great resources including the checklist: http://cainesarcade.com/schools/activitykits/

Students designing their cardboard games.

Day 2: We talked about conditional probability. Did another check for understanding on Kahoot. Then I got lots of cardboard boxes from our recycling bin and had to make a quick pit-stop at Dollar General for more cardboard boxes.

Day 3: I had a substitute teacher this day, but students started creating their boxes.

Day 4: We went over theoretical vs experimental probability. I gave students 7 minutes to finish their cardboard arcade games. Then we went over theoretical probability again. We talked about geometrical probability from Day 1. Students were given rulers and yardsticks and had to find the theoretical probability of successfully completing their arcade game.

Day 5: We finished the material for our probability unit. I gave students 5 minutes to make sure their game is playable and to finish anything on the checklist. Then we went over that I would give them 5 minutes to go play other games to get other groups experimental probability, then the partners would switch and the other partner would go play games.

I thought this unit was much better than the 3D dice activity from last year, this project was more hands-on and did a better job of combining the curriculum and the project together.

My Favorite: Marshmallow Catapult

When graphing parabolas I had lots of students ask when are we going to use this. One way I wanted to answer the question was by getting their hands dirty and make things. As of lately I have been big into the maker push, where students learn best by building and making things.

Next year I will teach and introduce the catapult at the same time, but this year I used it as more of an activity in between graphing parabolas and solving parabolas. 

To start we watched this video to get their interested sparked: 

Students received 10 popsicle sticks, one spoon, and 7 rubber bands. Their challenge was to create a catapult that will launch a marshmallow more times than any other group. Once students have created their catapult they will test and launch a marshmallow.

Students will take a burst photo and combine these photos on an app called SplitPic. On SplitPic you can have multiple photos overlapped onto one image. Students will put this in Desmos and find the equation of the parabola.

Students will use this picture in a Seesaw activity.  They had to describe the graph of the parabola and what it meant, how using the graph would help them, and do you need to change anything?

Here were some example blog posts:





The next day I gave students 10 minutes to practice, then we put their catapults to the challenge of getting as many shots into a paper bag as possible.  Here were some of the photos of our competition.