Tool 7

I looked at Class2class-math projects for some ideas that would work with my grade level. I browsed a few ideas, but I really liked the M&M project best. We do lots of graphing and work with probability in 3rd grade and this project was right in line with what we do. To make it work for my kids and my curriculum I would set the objective to focus on learning vocabulary for probability, such as less likely, more likely, certain, etc by examining the data from several 3rd grade classrooms in order to understand how the M&M company decides how many of each color M&M end up in each bag. We study probability later in the year, so I probably wouldn't do this until near Spring Break. I wouldn't need lots of materials, just the M&Ms and graph paper so students could record their results. After we gather the data from our class we would compare that to the data from the other classes in 3rd grade. Then we can work on the vocabulary that goes with probability, as well as analyze the data for what we notice and begin to explain how the data changed from class to class.