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

  • Blurred silhouettes of business people in a modern office with a glowing blue network overlay

    Open Secure AI Alliance Moving Under Linux Foundation

    Governance of the Open Secure AI Alliance has moved to the Linux Foundation, giving the initiative what the organizations describe as a neutral home for developing open source tools, shared standards and defensive practices. The Alliance was launched by NVIDIA in July to develop open security technologies for AI systems and agents.

  • 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.

  • Businessman using laptop analyzing data and growth graph chart

    Report: AI Budgets in Education Show No Sign of Decline

    The vast majority of education organizations (98%) expect their AI infrastructure budgets to either increase or hold steady over the next year, according to a report from cloud storage provider Wasabi.

  • Man types on laptop in data center

    Microsoft Announces General Availability of Point-in-Time Restore for Windows 11

    Microsoft has made point-in-time restore generally available for Windows 11, giving users and IT administrators a built-in way to roll back PCs after bad updates, driver problems, app corruption, or other problems.