Spaceport America Gift Shop Design Challenge

Students in my fourth quarter Math Literacy wrapped up the year with a bang!  Students delivered amazing presentations on their knowledge of marketing, sales, and manufacturing.  Many students expressed that they wanted to become future business leaders and entrepreneurs,  so I thought this project would be an appropriate way to encourage and strengthen their skills.

Thanks to Elias Molen at the Space Foundation for donating FREE family passes to visit the Discovery Institute this summer for the top two teams!

Spaceport America Gift Shop Presentation Rubric

Paper Airplane Design Challenge

The second project of third quarter Math Literacy was the Paper Airplane Design Challenge.  Using materials from a generic engineering design challenge, students quickly began designing their own planes or researching online for simple to challenging plane designs.  Students had to build their paper airplane within specific constraints and their designs had to perform in a distance competition.  Students had to share their design process, designs, and competition results with their peers as a culminating presentation.  Students also kept an engineering notebook to record their process.  A few students also submitted a how-to guide or video separate from their engineering notebook.

Thank you to the National Museum of World War II Aviation for donating FREE passes to the top two teams!

Paper Airplane Design Challenge 2015 Rubric
Exemplar Presentation

Dilations & Rotations

Students in a previous Math Literacy class shared how transformations (8th grade geometry standards) apply to their interests in their last project for the class. I wanted to mix things up a bit with the next group of students and received some inspiration from my mother-in-law.  She introduced me to a quilting craft video about students creating their own rotational symmetry using their name.  Attempting to reflect some letters became challenging for some students, so I also offered students the option of dilating a word, name, or image.  Students presented their creations along with a description of how their image represents transformation vocabulary as well as what their inspiration was for the choice of color, words, letters, images, etc.  I saw several of these students showcase their designs at the end-of-year learning fair :-)