Strengthen Math Skills
Are your students strengthening their skills in addition, multiplication, or perhaps estimation? Why not practice those skills using the data at the IditaRider Musher Auction section of the website. (CLICK HERE to view the auction data.)
Each year, race fans bid on taking an eleven mile ride in a musher’s sled at the start of the Iditarod. Bidding began on November 1 and will conclude on January 18th. The following are ideas for you to develop with your students.
- Between now and then, students can study the bid data and predict how much money the racers will be ’sold’ for and the total amount of money that will be raised during this auction. Students can compare their predictions and estimations with the real data after the bidding is over.
- Place students in small groups. Give each group a set of musher names from the IditaRider Auction. Each group creates a chart or graph to show the money received in bids for each musher name on the group’s list. Students ‘talk math’ with other groups to share and explain the data that the charts show.
- Create story or word problems using the musher data. (Compare the final bid for Musher A and Musher B. What was the difference between the two bids?) Challenge students to create story/word problems for each other. Encourage students to talk math as they work together.
No matter what area of math you are focusing on, the data from the auction provides you with interesting numbers for students to use in their daily math practice.
