This Week’s Anton Lesson Plan
With all the focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) programs in school, the “M” part of this acronym continues to be a crucial part of every student’s curriculum. To that end, this subject has a role in the makeup of newspapers and the their place in culture. Numbers are found in budget stories, calculating winning percentages for teams in the sports section and even determining the amount of people who may be affected by various government policies.
The following are exercises students can do to get a taste of the role mathematics plays in your newspaper.
• Count the number of pictures in this week’s edition of the newspaper. Create a graph of the number of pictures in the newspaper each week for a month.
• Each week for four weeks, measure in column inches (one column wide, one inch deep) the space used for local news, features, other stories, advertising and photos. Create a graph for each element for the four-week period.
• Select three display ads or pictures from the newspaper. What is the perimeter and area of each?
• Cut out advertisements or pictures from the newspaper that show the use of math. For example: pairs of shoes are multiples of two.
