Dan Meyer has created many mathematics lessons centered around storytelling, along with a methodology for using these with students. Before you do any of his lessons, please see the explanation at his blog: https://blog.mrmeyer.com/2011/the-three-acts-of-a-mathematical-story/ To see all the lessons in a Google Docs spreadsheet, go to https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jXSt_CoDzyDFeJimZxnhgwOVsWkTQEsfqouLWNN
C6Z4/edit#gid=0

The lessons are all CC BY, and you may edit these to fit your own students’ needs. The links from #GoOpenVA go to his own website because the structure of the lessons (including pertinent videos) is integral to the delivery of the lessons. Some lessons are stored as downloadable zip files, and these are noted as part of the link.

Students will sort and analyze data about a main character from the novel they are studying and create a desk or room depicting the accomplishments, life events and/or experiences, positive and negative of a character in a novel they are studying. This exercise would work well as a literature circle activity, group activity for a class novel, or an extension activity for an advanced class. Students will work in lit circle (small) groups on a project where they sort the data that they have learned directly and through inference while reading their story.. Students will use the data collected to create a depiction of the character's desk/room.

Friction is the amount of force or resistance acting on an object. Without friction driving or riding in vehicles would look extremely different and practically impossible. Scientists and engineers alike must collect data and information to draw conclusions after much analysis to determine the rate of friction acting on objects. In this activity students will collect and analyze data using excel sheets and create a line graph using the provided excel or google sheets program.

Investigating forms of data collectionMathematics Instructional Plans (MIPs) help teachers align instruction with the 2016 Mathematics Standards of Learning (SOL) by providing examples of how the knowledge, skills and processes found in the SOL and curriculum framework can be presented to students in the classroom.

Exploring data collection and graphing -- Mathematics Instructional Plans (MIPs) help teachers align instruction with the 2016 Mathematics Standards of Learning (SOL) by providing examples of how the knowledge, skills and processes found in the SOL and curriculum framework can be presented to students in the classroom. 

Modeling Data Using an Appropriate FunctionMathematics Instructional Plans (MIPs) help teachers align instruction with the 2016 Mathematics Standards of Learning (SOL) by providing examples of how the knowledge, skills and processes found in the SOL and curriculum framework can be presented to students in the classroom.

When designing programs or completing projects, students should consider what types of data might be used as input, how the data is to be stored and processed, and the output that meets the specific needs of the user. The collection and exchanging of data is used throughout the programming process. Both hardware and software components are critical to the collection and exchange of data. In this lesson, students will design a project to collect data involving rates. Students will input their data into a Google Sheet (software) using a computer (hardware). Students will store the data on the sheet and complete a ratio table involving the unit rate.

Students will research one of the seven federally recognized tribes of Native Americans in Virginia to identify local features of the land, their language, the region of Virginia where they originally lived, where the tribal lands are today, and how they interacted with their environment. From this research, the student groups will design a visualization of this data using a poster, online design tool, or a presentation. Student groups will present their information to each other, and the classroom will design a chart to find similarities and differences between the tribes.

In this activity, participants plan and conduct a plant growth experiment while considering the role of data quality in automated systems in agriculture. The timing of the activity is highly dependent on the seed variety that you are growing and the level of familiarity that participants already have with basic plant science and scientific investigation concepts, but will likely take several weeks. This activity is part of the Agricultural Cyberbiosecurity Education Resource Collection that contains resources for formal and non-formal agricultural educators working with middle school aged youth. Published as Open Educational Resources, all resources are provided in durable (pdf) and customizable (MS Word) formats. They are hosted on  GoOpenVA in a unique resource collection, Ag Cybersecurity Virginia Tech, at https://goopenva.org/curated-collections/143 and on on Virginia Tech’s stable repository, VTechWorks at https://doi.org/10.21061/cyberbiosecurity

Students will research how the development of the atomic bomb affected people in World War II, participate in a debate about the bomb's use, and investigate how it has affected people's lives since 1945.

In this lesson, students will learn how to balance chemical equations. They will also learn how to debug computer programs. By the end of the lesson, students will be able to see the similarities between these two processes and how they can be used to solve problems.

In this lesson, students are going to debug algorithms that list steps of how habitats change over time due to natural and human resources. Students will need to think critically about the order of steps that occur when habitats change over time.

Students will review major United States holidays and why they are celebrated as a precursor to completing activities to help students organize the dates of holidays sequentially. They will collect information in a graphic organizer, mark dates on a yearly calendar, debug sequencing errors in a timeline, and will make personal connections by describing how they celebrate one specific United States holiday with their families and/or friends.

During this lesson, students will make connections between Computer Science and making predictions in fiction and literary nonfiction. Students will make, confirm, and revise predictions and then see how this is rEnglishted to sequencing, looping, and debugging in Computer Science. Students will practice using text evidence and prior knowledge to make predictions. When their predictions are not correct, students will revise them by looking at the existing text evidence, adding or changing text evidence, re-evaluate their prior knowledge, and then make a new prediction. Students will learn that when they revise their predictions, it’s like Computer Scientists who have to debug algorithms when the result does not meet the expected outcome.

Students will work on taking the suggestions from partners from the last lesson and troubleshoot how they could improve their sequence for rounding. There are three lessons that go together to allow students to create a sequence, have a peer follow the sequence, then troubleshoot the sequence if steps fail.

Students will apply problem solving strategies to identify bugs in number sentences up to 9,999 and debug those number sentences. Students will review a scenario, identify the error (bug) and correctly solve and explain their debugging strategy.

TSW will be able to see the corrEnglishtion between CS standards of debugging and the English standard of recursive writing and editing. This lesson will take place after the teacher has gone over the writing rubric for Grade 8 SOL and has covered such topics as Content Written Expression and Usage and Mechanics in writing. Students should have a basic understanding of the five paragraph essay, outlining, desired construct of written essay, and have been provided with examples. Ideally this lesson will take place in the second or third quarter of the school year.

Students will debug a text by working in pairs or small groups to review a grade level text to determine where quotation marks are needed to indicate dialogue. Students will connect edits to the story to finding errors in computer programs. Provide examples.

Rounding decimals, through the thousandths, to the nearest whole number, tenth, or hundredth. Mathematics Instructional Plans (MIPs) help teachers align instruction with the 2016 Mathematics Standards of Learning (SOL) by providing examples of how the knowledge, skills and processes found in the SOL and curriculum framework can be presented to students in the classroom.