Scaling Up Candy Wrappers

The 7th grade teachers at my school decided to do a fun candy wrapper project right before winter break.  Students brought in a candy wrapper and we drew a centimeter grid over the wrapper.  It works well if you tape the wrapper on centimeter grid paper so students can easily draw straight lines.  After they grid their wrapper then each student decided on a scale factor to enlarge their wrapper.  I encouraged students  to go larger than a scale factor of 5 so image was a decent size.   Students then drew a new grid matching their scale factor ( scale factor of 5 = 5x5 cm squares).  Many students struggled with drawing straight lines so I had pre-made grids for my IEP students and anyone else who was struggling.  After the grid was drawn students started drawing images in the matching squares.  It was amazing to see the talent and engagement of my students throughout the project!

 Final products

  

How amazing is this wrapper?!  I am in awe of my students' talent! 

Sorry I didn't take any pictures throughout the project - maybe next year :)

This is a great project to do with students right before any of the breaks throughout the school year.  It took my students about 3 days (two days before break, 1 day after) to complete the wrappers.  In the past I have done a similar project with cartoons.  Both cartoons and candy wrappers work really well! 

Many people have asked for a rubric to use for the project - the rubric I use is blank so the students can decide on the criteria they should be assessed on.  As far as presenting the project to the students, I kind of "winged" the presentation and walked the students as a class through the first steps.  The students took off with the project and didn't need much more guidance.

If you would like a copy of the rubric click HERE.

Mind Maps - Round 2

This post is coming WAY later than I had planned - time has gotten away from me!  In November the time had come again for students to create mind maps for the word "compare".  I love having students connect all the the different ways to compare quantities after practicing them in the first investigation of CMP's Comparing and Scaling. 

For each class I made a poster with the main stems (fraction, percent, ratio, and difference) and selected students to add branches to the stems to make a class mind map.

At the end of the day I went to see how the mind maps went in the other 7th grade class and I was blown away! The maps were so creative!  Next year I will have to show these examples so to help my students become more invested with their creativity. 

This student had all the detailed information as the muscles and the main branches were the body parts. 

This student had each comparison as a different middle school that was in the district.  

This student drew what she visualized with each comparison - fraction = piece of pizza!

Now that I have seen a whole new level of creativity I can't wait to try mind maps again to see what my own students can come up with! 

Happy new year everyone!