task is adapted from Dan Meyer’s The Water Tank to align with CCSS 5th grade
standards: 5.MD.1,4,5
Act 1
Watch the Video
- How long will it take to fill up the fish tank?
- Make an estimate
- make and estimate you know is too high. Too low.
Act 2
10 seconds to pour 1 cup
Act 3
Click the link here to find more of My 3-Act Lessons
Hi Adrienne,
I’ll use this recording sheet https://gfletchy.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/3-act-recording-sheet.pdf and it pretty much lays the structure out for how I’ll conduct these tasks.
Whenever I do this with 5th grade students I’ll let them use a calculator because there is a lot of application going on. My thought is if students don’t know what they are doing the calculator won’t help them. We’ll normally do this as a grade level team during collaboration before students ever see it. It really prepares us for the type of questions and solutions paths that students can possibly take.
If you’re departmentalized, maybe give it a whirl in a vertical team. The conversations with teachers have proven far more powerful than me just sitting and grinding through a task…which I’m sure you agree. Let me know how it goes and if I can help out in any way just holler.