1. Teacher Guide
This lesson is designed to teach kids to ask a critical thinking question that you can’t just put into a search box to solve. To do that, we encourage them with smaller questions that search can help them answer. Make sure that you read the notes for each slide: they not only give you teaching tips but also provide answers and hints so you can help the kids if they are having trouble.
Remember, you can always send feedback to the Bing in the Classroom team at You can learn more about the program at bing.com/classroom and follow the daily lessons on our Partners In Learning site.
Want to extend today’s lesson? Consider using Skype in the Classroom to arrange for your class to chat with another class in today’s location. And if you are using Windows 8, you can also use the Bing apps to learn more about this location and topic; the Travel and News apps in particular make great teaching tools.
Ja'Dell Davis is a Los Angeles native who currently divides her time between New York City and Madison, Wisconsin. She is currently a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, pursing a PhD in Sociology. Ja’Dell previously taught high school in Philadelphia public schools, and implemented college access and academic enrichment programming in Chester, Pennsylvania and New York City in Manhattan’s Lower East Side neighborhood. Ja’Dell received her B.A. from Swarthmore College with a special major in History and Educational Studies, and a minor in Black Studies. She completed her M.S.Ed in Secondary School Education at the University of Pennsylvania.  In addition to her studies and work in the education field, Ja’Dell is a dancer, musician, avid people watcher, and Scrabble enthusiast.
This lesson is designed to teach the Common Core State Standard: The Number System
CCSS.Math.Content.6.NS.B.2Fluently divide multi-digit numbers using the standard algorithm.
CCSS.Math.Content.6.NS.B.3Fluently add, subtract, multiply, and divide multi-digit decimals using the standard algorithm for each operation.

2. How many times would you have to run around the lake in order to achieve the number of miles in a marathon?
© Chris Warren/SuperStock
Having this up as kids come in is a great settle down activity. You can start class by asking them for thoughts about the picture or about ideas on how they could solve the question of the day.

3. How many times would you have to run around the lake in order to achieve the number of miles in a marathon?
Ask for directions to Buttermere in England’s famous Lake District National Park and you’ll be guided to both the lake and the village that bear the name. Like many other ridiculously scenic locales in this Cumbrian region, Buttermere seems like an oil painting come to life.
Depending on time, you can either have students read this silently to themselves, have one of them read out loud, or read it out loud yourself.

4. How many times would you have to run around the lake in order to achieve the number of miles in a marathon? 1
Map Search
Find Buttermere on a map to see its location in relation to the rest of the United Kingdom. 2
Web Search
What is a marathon? What is the origin of this event? 3
Thinking
Do you run for exercise or sport? Is it enjoyable to you? Do you think you could complete a marathon? 4
How many miles are around the lake? 5
Web Search/
What is the process for finding out how many times you’d have to run around the lake in order to achieve the number of miles in a marathon?
There are a couple of ways to use this slide, depending on how much technology you have in your classroom. You can have students find answers on their own, divide them into teams to have them do all the questions competitively, or have each team find the answer to a different question and then come back together. If you’re doing teams, it is often wise to assign them roles (one person typing, one person who is in charge of sharing back the answer, etc.)

5. How many times would you have to run around the lake in order to achieve the number of miles in a marathon? 5
Minutes
You can adjust this based on how much time you want to give kids. If a group isn’t able to answer in 5 minutes, you can give them the opportunity to update at the end of class or extend time.

6. How many times would you have to run around the lake in order to achieve the number of miles in a marathon? 1
Map Search
Find Buttermere on a map to see its location in relation to the rest of the United Kingdom. 2
Web Search
What is a marathon? What is the origin of this event? 3
Thinking
Do you run for exercise or sport? Is it enjoyable to you? Do you think you could complete a marathon? 4
How many miles are around the lake? 5
Web Search/
What is the process for finding out how many times you’d have to run around the lake in order to achieve the number of miles in a marathon?
You can ask the students verbally or let one of them come up and insert the answer or show how they got it. This way, you also have a record that you can keep as a class and share with parents, others.

7. How many times would you have to run around the lake in order to achieve the number of miles in a marathon? 1
Map Search
Find Buttermere on a map to see its location in relation to the rest of the United Kingdom.
Using the “maps” link on the Bing search page, and the search term “Buttermere”, find the location here:

8. How many times would you have to run around the lake in order to achieve the number of miles in a marathon? 2
Web Search
What is a marathon? What is the origin of this event?
(Possible queries: “what is a marathon” ,“marathon history”)
From The Marathon Story (
An excerpt:
....
The Athenian Army was outnumbered 4 to 1 but they launched a surprise offensive thrust which at the time appeared suicidal. But by day's end, 6400 Persian bodies lay dead on the field while only 192 Athenians had been killed. The surviving Persians fled to sea and headed south to Athens where they hoped to attack the city before the Greek Army could re-assemble there.
Phidippides was again called upon to run to Athens (26 miles away) to carry the news of the victory and the warning about the approaching Persian ships. Despite his fatigue after his recent run to Sparta and back and having fought all morning in heavy armor, Phidippides rose to the challenge. Pushing himself past normal limits of human endurance, the reached Athens in perhaps 3 hours, delivered his message and then died shortly thereafter from exhaustion.
Sparta and the other Greek polies eventually came to the aid of Athens and eventually they were able to turn back the Persian attempt to conquer Greece.

9. How many times would you have to run around the lake in order to achieve the number of miles in a marathon? 3
Thinking
Do you run for exercise or sport? Is it enjoyable to you? Do you think you could complete a marathon?
Students should discuss their experiences running, their enjoyment, and their experience with or desire to experience a marathon.

10. How many times would you have to run around the lake in order to achieve the number of miles in a marathon? 4
Web Search
How many miles are around the lake?
(Possible queries: “lake buttermere” ,“distance around lake buttermere”)
From Wikipedia
There is a path around the lake which is about 4.5 miles (7.2 km) long, and at one point runs through a rock tunnel beneath the locality of Hassness.

11. How many times would you have to run around the lake in order to achieve the number of miles in a marathon? 5
Web Search/
Thinking
What is the process for finding out how many times you’d have to run around the lake in order to achieve the number of miles in a marathon?
Students should describe the information they would need in order to respond to the main question, and the procedure they would follow in order to successfully answer the problem.
The problem should be solved by the class:
26.2 miles in a standard marathon; 4.5 miles around Lake Buttermere; Divide the number of miles in a marathon by the number of miles around Lake Buttermere. This number indicates the number of time a person would have to run around the lake to be equivalent to a marathon.

12. How many times would you have to run around the lake in order to achieve the number of miles in a marathon?
This slide is a chance to summarize the information from the previous slides to build your final answer to the question.