My students loved learning about Cassini, the Saturn space probe covered in the December/January issue. They began by watching the video, Cassini’s Grand Finale, and then read about interesting math facts related to the exploration of Saturn.
To engage students in rich mathematical discourse, I had students creates a chart with math questions that would be beneficial in designing a space probe.
Because factor pairs were covered in the article, I had students roll dice to determine a product. Following that, they created a t-chart for that product. Then we discussed products with more than one set of factor pairs (composite numbers) and those that only had one and itself as a factor pair (prime numbers).
As a wrap-up activity, I had students solve the math problems in the article using t-charts as a solving strategy.