Coffee Cups Activity

As part of "flipping" my classroom I will be using my class time to have my students do some "Learning Through Problem Solving" (LTPS)

We have not yet studied arithmetic sequences. So, the following activity is a LTPS activity because the students have not yet learned any of the formulas associated with arithmetic sequences.

I will be using John Scammell's 7 step Learning Through Problem Solving approach.

Step 1: Show video Coffee Cups- Act1

Coffee cups--Act one from Jahan Khah on Vimeo.

Step 2: Ask the students- What question do they want to explore?
Hopefully the students want to know how many cups will they be able to stack on the shelf.

Step 3: Elicit student guesses: Have the students make guesses about how many cups they think will be able to be stacked on the shelf. As a class, agree on a range of reasonable answers.

Step 4: Ask the students what further information they need to answer their question. Show them Coffee Cups - Act2 to provide them with the necessary information.

Coffee cups--Act two from Jahan Khah on Vimeo.

Step 5: Allow students to work on the problem. Students who finish could be given an extension like, "Develop a formula to determine how many cups you could stack on a shelf of any height."

Step 6:Share student solutions. Have students share solutions with other students, or with the whole class using a document camera or chart paper.

Step 7: Show the answer video.

Coffee cups--Act three from Jahan Khah on Vimeo.

Finally, summarize what has been learned.