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Fill a mason jar with
jelly beans. Leave the jar on your desk for several class
days. Ask students to start thinking about how many jelly
beans are in the jar.
During your unit on absolute value equations
and inequalities (or during review), ask the students to submit a guess as
to how many jelly beans are in the jar.
After collecting the students' guesses, reveal
the number of jelly beans in the jar (for example, 354 beans).
Now ask a series of questions pertaining to the jelly beans. |
For example:
1. Ask students to write an absolute value "expression" (not
equation) that can be used to determine the winner of the contest. An answer such as |
x - 354| would be the
desired response.
2. If the "Jolly Jelly Beans" brand is used to
fill the jar, the jar will hold 422 jelly beans with a margin of
error (due to differently sized beans) of 4 beans. Ask
students to write an absolute value equation that will describe the
maximum and minimum number of Jolly Jelly Beans used to fill the
jar.
3. Bertie Botts jelly beans, made famous
in the Harry Potter™ series, come in 38 exotic flavors such as
Grass, Black Pepper, Sardine, Cotton Candy, and Bubble Gum.
Bertie Botts are sold in a 3.5 oz. cloth pouch bag. If the
pouch weight tolerance is
 ,
write an absolute value inequality to represent the acceptable
selling weights of the bags.
The student with the closest guess, wins the mason
jar of jelly
beans.
--If you have more than one class participating, you
can have one winner out of all of the classes, or prepare
one jar for each class.
--If you have a tie for the closest guess (but not the exact
answer), you can have the students guess again (until
differing answers are achieved).
--If you have a tie with the actual answer, you can have the
students split the prize. |
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