Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google


$25K Award Seeks Best Math Lesson for Grades 4–8

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 05/17/17

$25K Award Seeks Best Math Lesson for Grades 4–8 

Teachers with an amazing and original activity that helps students in grades 4 through 8 learn math can win a cash award of $25,000. The Rosenthal Prize is an annual set of awards issued by the National Museum of Mathematics, based in New York. Along with the top prize, five other teachers may also be in line to win thousands of dollars in additional prizes for their "noteworthy activities."

Last year's winner, Traci Jackson, took the top prize for her lesson, "Creating Color Combos: Visual Modeling of Proportional Relationships!" in which students explore proportional reasoning by mixing colored solutions to create different color combinations for visualizing ratios. Jackson is a teacher at Poway Unified School District near San Diego, CA. Second place winner, Dena Lordi, of Diamond Bar High School, also in California, won $10,000 for her lesson, "Where Can I Find a Weightless Stick?" in which students trace the changing balance point on a scale as weights are added in order to identify the mean value of a set of numbers. The 2015 winner, Jillian Young, a 5th grade teacher at Elwood Kindle Elementary School in New Jersey, earned the top award for "MUTANT Creature Invasion," a lesson that helps students learn about surface area and volume using Minecraft (a small portion of which is pictured above).

The Rosenthal Prize has four goals:

  • To "recognize and reward exceptional 4th through 12th grade teachers" who use innovations appropriate to their classrooms;
  • To demonstrate that innovative math teaching exists and can successfully reach the middle grades;
  • To share innovative activities with educators around the country; and
  • To encourage other teachers to innovate and use hands-on methods in their instructional practices.

The submission process starts with an application, which is due by May 24, 2017.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Man offers stem word sign on virtual screen

    Immersive Workforce Development Initiative Connects Students with Real-World STEM Careers

    The Center of Science and Industry, a science museum and research center in Central Ohio, has launched The HIVE, a workforce development initiative designed to help students across the country explore real-world career pathways in aerospace, advanced manufacturing, engineering, and emerging technologies.

  • digital lock

    CoSN: Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Remain Top AI Concerns in Education

    A leading concern for education technology leaders across the United States is the potential for AI to enable new forms of cyber attacks, according to the latest State of Ed Tech report from CoSN.

  • broken digital lock and glowing chain

    Check Point Researchers: AI Has Crossed into the Live Attack Chain

    AI is moving beyond assisting cybercriminals and beginning to operate within live attacks, according to a recent report from Check Point Research. The technology is making sophisticated capabilities faster and more accessible while creating new security risks for businesses deploying their own AI systems.

  • circuit patterns

    Anthropic Intros Lower-Cost Claude Sonnet 5

    Anthropic has launched Claude Sonnet 5, positioning the model as its most autonomous mid-tier offering to date and a lower-cost alternative to its flagship Opus 4.8 system. The company said the model can plan multi-step tasks, operate tools such as browsers and terminals, and complete agentic work at a level that previously required larger and more expensive models.