Math Lessons in Love with PBS

The Odds of Finding Life and Love/ It’s Okay to be Smart

From calculating the odds of finding love to counting down to summer, this fun mix of math resources supports young counters as well as upper-level number crunchers. Elementary resources can be used to enhance “100th Day of School” projects throughout February. Sign up for a free PBS LearningMedia account to access thousands more educational resources from PBS and partners.  Build PBS LearningMedia interactive lessons and quizzes to create media-rich teaching and learning opportunities in your classroom.

100^th Day of School Guide | Video | Grades PreK-1
Celebrate the 100th Day of School with activities all about the number 100. Use this Peg + Cat 100th Day of School educator guide to bring estimation and counting into the classroom.

Many Ways to Make a Whole | Video | Grades PreK-1
Mr. Steve sings about exploring fractions by dividing a pizza and a pie into halves and fourths, teaching that there are many ways to make a whole in this video from Everyday Math for Preschoolers collection.

Odd Squad Collection | Grades  K-3
Welcome to Odd Squad: the zaniest, craziest team of kid investigators around! Explore content below targeted at making elementary-level math a fun, imaginative experience, mixing concepts like arithmetic and geometry with fantastical storytelling.

Skip Counting |  Activity | Grades 1-3, 13+
In this activity, students will review counting by fives, tens, and hundreds and discuss how 100 is a bundle of ten tens. Included are simple teacher-led activities and hands-on exercises for students.

Multiplication Trick | Video | Grades 2-5
Students learn nine times tables in just a few minutes with Mya, the Full-Time Kid.

PBS Math Club | Videos | Grades 3-9
PBS Math Club helps students with  homework… and provides a laugh. Videos cover the 6th-9th grade Common Core Standard for math; topics like adding and subtracting integers, equations, ratios and proportions, and statistics. They use uncommon examples like Mean Girls to explain adding negative numbers.

Math at the Core | Videos, Interactives and Lessons Collection | Grades 5-8
Find engaging media and integrated activities, all aligned with the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics. Designed for middle school students of diverse learning styles and backgrounds. Produced by a collaborative of public media stations and producers with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Zombies and Calculus | Video | Grades 6-12
Learn about the math behind predator-prey population cycles in this video from NOVA Digital. In this example, zombie and human populations fluctuate. The zombie population increases as zombies convert humans into zombies. However, without enough humans to eat, zombies die and the population shrinks.

The Odds of Finding Love | Video | Grades 6-13+
Joe Hanson, host of It’s Okay To Be Smart  explores Enrico Fermi’s paradox of why we haven’t crossed paths with any extraterrestrials, and then uses Frank Drake’s equation to estimate the number of civilizations that might exist in our galaxy. Finally, meet a young lady named Ann and see if we can calculate how many special someones there might be out there for her. It’s a cosmic love story.

Writing Algebraic Equations | Video| Grades 7
In this video, learn how writing an algebraic equation can help solve a real-life scenario—in this case, determining in advance when to buy a supply of cat food. Learning how to translate a real-life scenario to mathematical language is an important skill. In the accompanying classroom activity, students practice developing expressions and equations from story problems. Special attention is paid to identifying the variable. Students also take turns as mathematicians, coming up with some of their own scenarios for their classmates to solve.