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Students at Bowdon Middle School are shown matching paper card sets during eighth grade math class. Joseph Turner, an eighth grade math teacher uses this activity to help students estimate lengths of everyday objects, convert between decimals and scientific notation, and make comparisons of the size of numbers expressed in both decimal and scientific notation.
First, students match decimal numbers to the corresponding scientific notation (Card Set A). Second, students order picture representations with brief descriptions of everyday objects (Card Set B). Then, students match the picture cards from Set B to the corresponding length values from Set A. Finally, cards with various multipliers (Card Set C) are introduced, and the students attempt to create a true number sentence by matching cards from all three sets.
Turner incorporates this activity as planned by the eighth grade math planning group made up of teachers from throughout Carroll County Schools. Students have a hands-on experience that connects the math curriculum to real life. The specific standards from the Common Core Georgia Performance Standards that is addressed state, "Use numbers expressed in the form of a single digit times an integer power of 10 to estimate very large or very small quantities, and to express how many times as much one is than the other. For example, estimate the population of the United States as 3 × 108 and the population of the world as 7 × 109, and determine that the world population is more than 20 times larger, and perform operations with numbers expressed in scientific notation, including problems where both decimal and scientific notation are used. Use scientific notation and choose units of appropriate size for measurements of very large or very small quantities (e.g., use millimeters per year for seafloor spreading)."
This Formative Assessment Lesson is borrowed from the MARS Shell Center, University of Nottingham.
Bowdon has a long, distinguished history. It is near the geographic center of the last land in Georgia held by the Creek Nation and ceded to the United States on November 15, 1827.
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