How Long is The Block?
For this project students will use some information about the relative size of different vehicles as compared to a typical car, as well as principles of equality to set up and solve an equation about the length of a block near school. It gets students outside to tally up vehicles and put a real face on algebra. There is an introductory problem and images of vehicles for students to cut out and paste onto an explanation poster. In my class we actually went outside with a long tape measurer and determined the correct length and calculated our percent error.