Garbage Can Basketball

5 March 2013 - Today we took a short break from the textbook and practiced some hands-on work with fractions and decimals! We had one student away, which left us with a nice, round 25 students - an easy number to convert into 100.

Each student ripped four pages from a magazine and crumpled it up, giving us exactly 100 basketballs. I then placed a garbage can on a table at the from of the class and we were good to go. We each took 4 shots while seated at our desks, and 11 of the balls went in the bucket.

First, we wrote it as a fraction over 100. (11/100) The students then had to convert it to a decimal (0.11) and a fraction using a denominator of 1000 (110/1000) and a decimal value to the thousandths place (0.110).

Then, we established a foul line in the center of the class and the students took turns shooting four shots again. This time, 18 shots went in, so we wrote the same four values.

 

18/100 = 0.18 = 180/1000 = 0.180

Then we made it a little more challenging, each taking four shots from the back of the room. This time, only 2 went in.

2/100 = 0.02 = 20/1000 = 0.020

To finish up, Mr. C. (Grade 8 teacher) and I faced off, taking ten shots each. He hit 2, while I hit <cough> zero. The students calculated his results as:

 

2/10 = 20/100 = 0.2 = 200/1000 = 0.200

What a fun way to practice fractions and decimals!