This activity provides students an opportunity to go through the data cycle process focusing on a statistical investigative question based on something students would like to learn about themselves. In our day-to-day experiences we are surrounded by variability and this activity provides students an opportunity to formulate a question that can be answered with data, as they collect, consider, and analyze the data and then interpret and communicate their findings. We are thankful for Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec who shared their Dear Data journey with the world.

Games provide a fun environment for supporting children in building number fluency. As children learn to play the games, speed should not be the focus. Encourage strategy and ask students to explain their thinking.

This is a really nice task as it is open to everyone, can be solved in different ways and can also extend to work in combinatorics Ð a nice way of organizing counting. Ask students to work on this task in groups, and to display their results on posters. Often we name studentsÕ different approaches and strategies.

Leo the Rabbit has become a youcubed favorite. It is a great problem for using creativity to illustrate and justify student thinking and it leads to rich class discussion.

In this task, students work together to create live data visualizations of a dataset about Marvel movies. Each student is given a data card that provides information about one movie, the studentÕs job is to play the part of Òdata pointÓ as the class works to physically organize themselves into ÔliveÕ visualizations of the data. The data provides opportunities for students to organize themselves into bar graphs, histograms, and scatter plots.

Students build and draw three-dimensional cubes made up of small unit cubes. Student study patterns by analyzing the number of sides painted of each unit cube, which made up the larger painted cube.

This is a youcubed favorite which comes from Mark Driscoll. The activity encourages students and teachers to engage in visual, creative thinking. We have coupled MarkÕs activity with asking students to reason and be convincing, two important mathematical practices.

This activity allows students to explore how numbers are composed, by having them look at different ways of grouping them. There are many different strategies and methods students can use to come up with a solution. Students can use actual pennies, draw diagrams, and use charts to keep track of their findings. As students explore they will notice many different patterns in the numbers they are exploring.

We often see growth pattern tasks that focus on numerical questions like ÒHow many squares are in the 100th case?Ó or ÒHow many squares are in the nth case?Ó These are good questions, but we only ask them after we focus on what the shape looks like and how it grows. We start by asking students ÒHow do you see the shapes growing?Ó and we ask that they make their answer entirely visual, that they forget about counting and numbers. Color coding is often a great tool for this.

It seems that taxis have been a part of my life for years. When I was a teacher and academic in London I would see the iconic Black cabs zipping around the streets of London, and I would occasionally travel in them. It was years later when these Black cabs became important again, as some of the first evidence on the plasticity of brains Ð even adult brains Ð came from studying the brains of drivers of Black cabs in London (see video link below). Researchers found that after their intensive spatial training the brains of the drivers of Black cabs strengthened and grew. Years later I was teaching my freshman class when I met Tessa, who proposed this taxi activity for youcubed.

This is a great game with lots of strategy. High school students enjoy playing! The game provides a great way to practice and build fluency in single digit multiplication. If a player needs support, tools like calculators and times tables can be provided. We have also included two versions of the game board, one 6 x 6 grid and the other an 8 x 8 grid. During and/or after playing students can discuss strategies. During play students can justify their product at each turn through words, symbols or pictures. Students will also enjoy making up their own rules for new games.

Students explore the area of trapezoids as they draw different examples of trapezoids.

This task helps students build number sense as they practice calculating. The task has more than one solution which is nice. At the end it asks students to write a clue that gives the task only one solution.