@dandersod posted the following video on his blog last week.
He asked, of course, What Can You Do With This?
I decided that there was a lot I could do with it, so I worked on some editing of the video, and then I rolled it out with a group of teachers this morning to see where it would go.
Before I describe the lesson, I should point out that my first edit of the video involved crossing out some of the measurements the original video contained, as well as beeping out the commentary that mentioned the measurements. I was limited by my video editing skill, and the software I was using. It ended up being awkward and kind of annoying, so I re-did it simply by deleting the parts I had originally wanted obscured. The new video was much cleaner, and it had the extra benefit of not being so obvious about what I wanted students to explore. With the beeps and blocked out numbers visible in the first edit, it was painfully evident what I wanted people to find. The second edit allows for many more directions to be taken in the exploration, and it’s not even obvious that I have deleted anything.
Here was my lesson plan.
- Provide each group a ruler and a 60 g bag of gummy bears.
- Play the question video.
- Ask the students what they wonder about after seeing the video. In this edit, they will wonder about a whole bunch of things. I’m hoping they get to, “How many small gummy bears are equivalent to the giant bear, and what are the dimensions of the giant gummy bear?”
- Elicit guesses, lower bounds, and upper bounds of reasonable answers.
- Ask them if they need any clarification or information that might help
- Turn them loose.
- Work the room. Help those who are struggling. Provide extensions for those who hammered through it.
- Have students share their answers. They will be all over the place here. Those that work with the calorie count will be closest to the “right answer”. Those that worked with the mass will be a bit farther out.
- Play the answer video.
- Discuss discrepancies. Is it measurement error? Problems with the calculations? False advertising?
- Eat the gummy bears.
The lesson is fun, engaging, and has great curricular fit to Alberta’s Math 20-2 course in the measurement and proportional reasoning units.
At step #3 above, some members of the group I was working with really wanted to go a different direction. Their suggestions became cool extensions for those that got done quickly.
- How tall is the man in the video, who is the same height as the gummy bear from 30 feet away?
- How many times would you have to walk around the school to burn off the giant gummy bear?
Enjoy
[…] Update: John Scammell blogs about his Giant Gummy Bear experience (great stuff): https://thescamdog.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/the-giant-gummy-bear/ […]
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