Date of Award

5-2012

Degree Type

Report

Degree Name

Master of Mathematics (MMath)

Department

Mathematics and Statistics

Committee Chair(s)

Brynja R. Kohler

Committee

Brynja R. Kohler

Committee

Daniel C. Coster

Committee

James A. Powell

Abstract

The State of Utah has changed the mathematics core curriculum several times over the past decade. The latest change was the adoption of the Common Core State Standards introducing both grade level content standards and standards of mathematical practice that emphasize how students are to study and reason with mathematics at all grade levels. According to state officials, these standards require more mathematical reasoning, problem solving, and deeper understanding than previous core curriculum documents. One way to address this change is for teachers to educate using projects during their instruction as unit starters, daily lessons, and for evaluation purposes. Yet finding instructional materials takes considerable time and effort; hence, I have gathered, analyzed, and classified several projects teachers currently use in their classrooms according to the Common Core State Standards and presented them here in this report.

This report contains five projects that cover different mathematical components of the new core. The Invention Project is a statistics lesson comprised of a student survey along with several types of statistical follow-up questions that allow students to represent, display and interpret data. The Dilation project is an application based on dilating a greeting card with a scale factor by using proportions and similar figures. The Interior and Exterior Angles Project leads students to find the sum of interior and exterior angles of convex polygons after students have learned the Triangle Sum Theorem. The Celebrity Project uses an applet to show lines of best fit, and then engages the students in creating their own data of ordered pairs in a scatterplot, once the data is obtained students learn the procedure for generating a regression line. The Kite Flying Project allows for multiple learning levels as students pursue the Pythagorean Theorem with a hands-on approach. Materials for project implementation such as student task sheets, scoring rubrics, and the alignment with Common Core State Standards are included in this report.

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This work made publicly available electronically on November 5, 2012.

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