This 8th grade Math parent guide explains the content in straightforward terms so they can support their children’s learning at home and will encourage caretaker engagement with lessons.

Our Teacher Guides are meant to support the use of our online course and unit content. Please use these to accompany the use of our content and for ideas to support struggling learners, those needing extension and for additional resources.

Students conduct a simple experiment to see how the water level changes in a beaker when a lump of clay sinks in the water and when the same lump of clay is shaped into a bowl that floats in the water. They notice that the floating clay displaces more water than the sinking clay does, perhaps a surprising result. Then they determine the mass of water that is displaced when the clay floats in the water. A comparison of this mass to the mass of the clay itself reveals that they are approximately the same.

The students have been hired to design molds to pour hot chocolate into to make individual-sized chocolate pieces. The molds can either be spheres, hemispheres, cones or cylinders. The chocolate company wants each chocolate to have a volume within 0.05 cubic inches of 0.25 cubic inches (0.25 ± 0.05 cubic inches). Design a mold for each of the four shapes that meets this criterion. Include a sketch with dimensions and show mathematics to support that the volume falls into the given range. Present the information clearly on a sheet of paper or poster to present to the chocolate company’s management.

In this activity, the students will demonstrate the ability to represent numbers in scientific notation and use geometry to solve problems about planets in the solar system.

This document provides sample performance tasks/assessment items for Common Core State Standards Grade 8 Math provided by the Louisiana Department of Eduation. Both questions and exemplary responses are included.

Students must calculate the volume of a cone in this real world task.

For this lesson, students know how to compute the average rate of change in the height of water level when water is poured into a conical container at a constant rate.

Students will be able to model how the changes of a figure in such dimensions as length, width, height, or radius affect other measurements such as perimeter, area, surface area, or volume.

For this lesson, students know how to determine the volume of a figure composed of combinations of cylinders, cones, and spheres.

The purpose of this task is to give students practice working the formulas for the volume of cylinders, cones and spheres, in an engaging context that provides and opportunity to attach meaning to the answers.

This activity is an easy way to demonstrate the fundamental properties of polar and non-polar molecules (such as water and oil), how they interact, and the affect surfactants (such as soap) have on their interactions. Students see the behavior of oil and water when placed together, and the importance soap (a surfactant) plays in the mixing of oil and water which is why soap is used every day to clean greasy objects, such as hands and dishes. This activity is recommended for all levels of student, grades 3-12, as it can easily be scaled to meet any desired level of difficulty.

This task gives students an opportunity to work with volumes of cylinders, spheres and cones. Notice that the insight required increases as you move across the three glasses, from a simple application of the formula for the volume of a cylinder, to a situation requiring decomposition of the volume into two pieces, to one where a height must be calculated using the Pythagorean theorem.

Students are presented with a guide to rain garden construction in an activity that culminates the unit and pulls together what they have learned and prepared in materials during the three previous associated activities. They learn about the four vertical zones that make up a typical rain garden with the purpose to cultivate natural infiltration of stormwater. Student groups create personal rain gardens planted with native species that can be installed on the school campus, within the surrounding community, or at students' homes to provide a green infrastructure and low-impact development technology solution for areas with poor drainage that often flood during storm events.

For this activity, students view a video of a gumball machine and cogitate, estimate, and calculate to answer questions about the gumballs. (Note: There is no sound until about the 1:00 mark).

For this activity, students explore scale, similar figures, volume and measurement as they estimate the amount of coffee that the largest coffee mug in the world can hold. Students also calculate how many cups of coffee the mug could produce and the value of the coffee held in the mug.

In this lesson, students represent numbers in scientific notation, and use geometry to solve problems related to three-dimensional figures. They will also explore distance and capacity problems about planets in the solar system.

This lesson unit is intended to help you assess how well students are able to: interpret a situation and represent the variables mathematically; select appropriate mathematical methods; interpret and evaluate the data generated; and communicate their reasoning clearly.

For this activity, students view an image of three different sized containers holding pennies to answer questions.

Students use their knowledge of scales and areas to determine the best locations in Alabraska for the underground caverns. They cut out rectangular paper pieces to represent caverns to scale with the maps and place the cut-outs on the maps to determine feasible locations.