Real World Ratio and Proportion

Mr. Garcia is currently working on a unit on ratio and proportion. He has his students review this concept and complete some practice problems. Once students have demonstrated that they have completed their skill builders, he sends them to the Math Bites website to demonstrate their understanding and play a game.

As a final step before giving students credit for the unit, Mr. Garcia has them create a final project on some of the concepts covered in the unit and present the project to the class. Students are expected to demonstrate how they will apply the concepts they have learned to problems in the real world.

For the concept of ratio and proportion, students will searches the Internet for photographs of real objects such as buildings and bridges and uses these photographs as a context for creating word problems. For example, one student finds a picture of the Tower Bridge in London taken at water level. This bridge has two tall towers with a high pedestrian walkway. Below the walkway is a road for cars that contains a drawbridge and below the roadway is the water. The student's question regarding this photograph is, “If the towers on the bridge are 206 feet tall, what is the tallest ship that can go under the roadway without raising the drawbridge?” In his presentation he explains how one could calculate the answer by measuring the various elements in the photograph and using the height of the real tower and ratio and proportion to get the height of the roadway above water.

Mr. Garcia instructs each student to present their question, photographic images and their solution to the class using a PowerPoint presentation.

Tools used in this scenario:
Online learning environment ratio and proportion for high school and college: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=3419

Skill building: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/maths/number/ratiosrev5.shtml
http://www.algebrahelp.com/worksheets/view/proportionbasics.quiz
Creation and presentation: PowerPoint

Last modified: Tuesday, May 29, 2012, 3:34 PM