Sunday, February 1, 2015

A Giant Hand: A Proportional Reasoning Review Activity


One of my classes was catching onto proportions fairly quickly and I wanted to give them an activity where they could apply those skills. 

Wooden figure of little man sitting on big hand, front view,
Giant Hand: A Proportional Reasoning Activity


How to review proportional reasoning with middle school math students?

I found this link to a lesson called Hands on the Giant. I projected a giant hand onto paper and traced one for each group. Their instructions were to find the height of the giant just knowing how big its hand was. I gave them no hints and let them work. 

Immediately some groups were measuring themselves and their hands and then setting up an equivalent proportion. It was great to see them pull from the math they knew to solve this problem. 




The only prep was tracing the giant hands. I made about 6 per class. This could take awhile or you could get some student helpers to trace the hands for you. All the work students did was right on the butcher paper. 

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