Overview/Getting Started:
This program is designed to supplement your existing instruction of these probability topics:
strategies to identify favorable and total outcomes; calculating simple probability; sampling and proportions; calculating compound probability; and using probability concepts to solve real-world problems.
The materials are taught through this story line: Athena and Rick are two middle-school students admired for their powerful mathematical thinking and real-world problem-solving skills. Asked by classmates for help preparing for a mathematics standardized test, the duo develops a smartphone application with practice math problems. The app, featuring a fictitious celebrity couple and their pet, is so successful that Athena and Rick decide to form a business, which provides them with new opportunities and challenges.
The program includes three lessons, each with a corresponding worksheet. A bonus worksheet, which also promotes financial literacy, gives students the opportunity to apply the skills and knowledge they've learned in a real-world context.
A new bonus online challenge engages students to use probability skills to help Rick and Athena plan a summer concert tour. This online activity, which allows students to use math for real purposes, is designed as an optional assignment for in or out of the classroom.
A classroom poster displays strategies for identifying outcomes as well as determining probability, and underscores the concept that probability can be expressed as a fraction, a decimal, or a percentage.
