To help students be engaged in the classroom, it is important for teachers to capture the students’ attention and relate material to the students. This will create more interest and hopefully will result into more learning taking place in the classroom. Most students like to drink soda, so involving something they may like with ratios and proportions can enable students to grasp the concept a little easier.
The Coke v. Sprite math problem was found on the Dan Meyer’s 3-Act Math task website. This problem has students think about ratios and proportions in a different way, while mixing two sodas and figuring out which soda contains more of its original soda. This activity can be found at the following link: http://mrmeyer.com/threeacts/cokevsprite/
To begin the lesson, the teacher would pose the question by showing the clip and asingk students to make individual guesses with a written reason of why he or she responded the way they did. The students’ reasons are very important. The teacher should encourage students to use pictures, symbols, or anything that will be helpful when explaining his or her reasoning to somebody else. After allowing students enough time to think about their reasoning and write it down the teacher would show the second video clip to reveal the answer. The second video clip shows the ratio of original soda in a different way that, I believe, is easier to see what really is going on. Two follow up questions that were posed by Dan Meyer were, “What if the soda didn’t mix? Would that change the answer?”
The Common Core State Standard that is addressed with this problem is 6th grade ratios and proportions.
6.RP.A.3 Use ratio and rate reasoning to solve real-world and mathematical problems, e.g., by reasoning about tables of equivalent ratios, tape diagrams, double number line diagrams, or equations.
This activity is a great way for sixth grade students to begin to understand how ratios and proportions can play out in real-world scenarios. Although this activity is very simple it does a very good job in demonstrating how the ratio changed and how the end product was affected. By doing an activity that students can relate to and be interested in they are more likely to participate and want to figure out the answer and ultimately learn a new concept.