WNET Middle School Math Lessons
Solving Fraction Problems in Ecotopia

The CyberSquad must help move animals from a preserve that has been ecologically damaged to a new preserve. To do this they need to use proportional reasoning, fractions, and operations to ensure the animals get the space they require to thrive in the new preserve.

Keyboard Shortcut Action
Space Pause/Play video playback
Enter Pause/Play video playback
m Mute/Unmute video volume
Up and Down arrows Increase and decrease volume by 10%
Right and Left arrows Seek forward or backward by 5 seconds
0-9 Fast seek to x% of the video.
f Enter or exit fullscreen. (Note: To exit fullscreen in flash press the Esc key.
c Press c to toggle captions on or off

There’s a chemical disaster at Ecotopia Nature Preserve and the CyberSquad has to figure out a way to find a new home for 2/3 of the animals. How will they do it?

Discussion Questions:

  • In this video, Oliver asks the following questions: “How much living space is gone? And how much is left?” Why do you think the CyberSquad placed a grid on top of the map of the preserve to answer these questions? Did the grid help them solve the problem?
  • How do Jackie and Matt describe 6/18? In your own words, explain how they arrived at this answer.
  • How does the CyberSquad figure out how many animals to move to the preserve? What math did they use to solve this problem? Describe their process.