Dan Meyer's follow up on Toaster Math

Dan Meyer writes about how to solve the toaster math problem he posted and I wrote about. This couldn't be more timely as I just used his toaster math question to get my class thinking about ratio and proportion. I did three lessons of "Meyer Math questions", culminating in the toaster math question before I even mentioned that the topic of this month's unit would be ration and proportion.

Meyer — Toaster Regression from Dan Meyer on Vimeo.

I had a volunteer in my classroom and he was busy in the back of the room trying to solve the toaster quesstion. Notably, I did not even speak during or after the toaster math video. Part of the appeal of such questions is that the kids have to figure out the question themselves. Check out the first link for the toaster math video and the second for possible solutions. Keep in mind that one of the big ideas is that there can be many solutions (divergent thinking).


One particular student, who has a real mental block about math, exclaimed, "we should do math this way every day!" after we finished the first three activities. I look forward to many challenging lessons addressing the conceptual foundations of math instead of the computational barrage typical in our classrooms.