The new mission: A rescue on Titan.
Master ratio, rate, and percent.
Student crews build a motorized racer, run time trials, and use ratio and rate to navigate a rescue mission to Saturn's largest moon.
Journey to Titan is a 10-session, 15–20 hour hands-on Math Lab. Students build a motorized racer — the E.E.V. — using Circuit Cubes™ kits, ramp materials, tape measures, and stopwatches. Crews conduct time trials, collect real distance and time data, and record results on mission planning sheets and data forms.
Students start by building the racer and making physical measurements — timing runs, recording distances, calculating speed by hand. From there, they move to representing their data in tables and on graphs, comparing rates across trials. By the end of the sequence, they're working with ratio, unit rate, and percent abstractly — creating flight plans, decoding launch sequences, and applying proportional reasoning to navigate a rescue mission on Saturn's largest moon.
How the curriculum works
Students receive a distress signal from Titan. Over 10 sessions, they design, build, measure, and calculate their way to a rescue.
- Session 1: Students design a team flag using ratio and scale.
- Session 2: Students build their E.E.V. racer from Circuit Cubes™ components and make initial predictions about its speed.
- Session 3: Time trials — students set up ramps, release their racers, start and stop stopwatches, stretch tape measures along the floor, mark distances, and calculate unit rate.
- Sessions 4–5: Students make rate predictions using their data, then develop accuracy by refining measurement techniques across repeated trials.
- Session 6: Students change ramp height and measure how speed changes — calculating variable rates and comparing results across trials.
- Session 7: Students build a flight plan using percent increase and decrease to calculate fuel requirements and plot a course from Earth to Titan.
- Session 8: Students decode a launch sequence using ratio and percent.
- Sessions 9–10: Students send their robot TYRO to Titan using accumulated rate and ratio skills, then plan a planetary evacuation pulling together ratio, rate, and percent.
10 sessions at a glance
Three sample sessions
Who it's for
- 6th grade teachers looking for hands-on supplemental curriculum in ratio, rate, and percent.
- 5th and 7+ grade teachers who need enrichment or review.
- Afterschool and summer program directors who want structured, ready-to-run STEM programming with all materials included.
- Curriculum coordinators looking for hands-on, standards-aligned supplements that work alongside any core curriculum — no adoption process required.
What's in the kit
- Circuit Cubes™ motorized racer kits (E.E.V.)
- Ramp materials for time trials and data collection
- Tape measures and stopwatches
- Mission planning sheets and data recording forms
- Team flag templates and design materials
- Graphing paper and calculation sheets
- Construction paper, markers, and stickers
- Quick-reference teacher booklet
How it runs in the classroom
Every session runs through a web-based slide portal. Each session opens with the day's mission objective and crew setup, then moves into the hands-on activity. Short visual mini-lessons teach the math students need to do the work, narrated by veteran math educator Howie Templer.
Sessions run between 45 and 90 minutes, with some extending longer at the teacher's discretion. The curriculum works as a daily block (3–4 weeks), a twice-weekly enrichment (5–10 weeks), or an afterschool/summer program. It supplements any core curriculum — students learn ratio, rate, and percent through their regular instruction, and Journey to Titan is where they apply those concepts with physical materials and collaborative problem-solving.
Open the kit, follow the slides, and go.
Standards by session
Journey to Titan covers ratio, unit rate, percent, and proportional reasoning — standards already in your grade 6 scope, with extensions into grade 7. It doesn't replace your core instruction on these topics. It gives students a place to apply what you're already teaching, using physical materials and collaborative problem-solving.
| # | What students do | Standards |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Team flag — ratio & scale design | 6.RP.A.1 |
| 2 | Build E.E.V. & predict — rate & data | 6.RP.A.2 |
| 3 | Time trials — unit rate | 6.RP.A.2, 6.RP.A.3 |
| 4 | Rate predictions — proportional reasoning | 6.RP.A.3 |
| 5 | Develop accuracy — precision & measurement | 6.RP.A.3 |
| 6 | Changing speeds — variable rate | 6.RP.A.3, 7.RP.A.2 |
| 7 | Flight plan — percent increase & decrease | 6.RP.A.3, 7.RP.A.3 |
| 8 | Decode launch sequence — ratio & percent | 6.RP.A.3 |
| 9 | Send TYRO to Titan — apply rate & ratio | 6.RP.A.3 |
| 10 | Evacuate the planet — rate, ratio & percent | 6.RP.A.1–3 |
Professional development
PD is optional. The teaching portal provides step-by-step guidance for every session, and most teachers run Journey to Titan successfully from the slides alone. PD is recommended when you want to deepen teaching practice around hands-on facilitation, or when a department or grade-level team is adopting the lab together.
Professional development focuses on teaching practice — structuring hands-on learning, facilitating collaborative problem-solving, and reading student thinking during open-ended data work. Led by a nationally recognized math educator, teachers work through a Journey to Titan session as learners — building the E.E.V., running time trials, collecting distance and time data, and calculating unit rate from their own measurements. Then they unpack the teaching moves with the facilitator: how to structure the teamwork, where students get stuck, what questions to ask, when to step back.
Format & details
- Half-day workshop, up to 30 participants
- $3,495 flat fee
- Led by a nationally recognized math educator
- Teachers experience a full lab session as learners, then unpack the pedagogy
- Fundable through Title II-A professional development funds
- Available as a follow-up coaching package for ongoing implementation support
Evaluation partnership
For districts running formal evaluation studies. If your research office, grant funder, or district evaluation requirements call for a structured study of program impact, we partner with you to design one. If you're a classroom teacher, you don't need any of this to run Journey to Titan — this section is for evaluation directors, research partners, and grant compliance.
Structure a rigorous study using your own assessments, your own comparison groups, and your own timeline. We don't sell the data — your district owns the results and is free to publish.
Research design options
Simple pre/post
Administer a brief assessment before and after the lab, using district benchmark questions or the 10story pre/post instrument.
Delayed-start RCT
Half of participating classrooms begin first, the other half a few weeks later. Assess all students after the first group completes the project. Use a 10story pre/post or your own assessment.
Matched comparison
Compare participating classrooms to non-participating classrooms with similar demographics and prior achievement.
Implementation + perception study
Document implementation fidelity, student engagement, and teacher perception alongside quantitative measures.
Kit
Crews of 4 students each. The Full Kit serves a single classroom.
Full Kit
Materials for a full classroom of 7 Space Academy crews.
- 7 crew material packs
- Circuit Cubes™ E.E.V. motorized racer kits
- Ramp materials, tape measures, and stopwatches
- Mission planning sheets and data recording forms
- Team flag templates, graphing paper, calculation sheets
- Quick-reference teacher booklet and teacher portal access
Cost per student
$1,499 ÷ 28 students = $54 per student for 15–20 hours of instruction.
Year over year
The Journey to Titan kit includes both durable components (Circuit Cubes™ racer kits, ramp materials, tape measures, stopwatches) and consumable mission materials (planning sheets, data recording forms, team flag templates, graphing paper, calculation sheets, construction paper). Each new class needs a fresh kit to ensure students have the mission and data materials they need. Most districts budget Journey to Titan as an annual line item.
Funding
Schools and districts commonly fund Journey to Titan through:
- Title I (supplemental support for under-served students)
- Title IV-A (Student Support and Academic Enrichment)
- ESSER carryovers, where still available
- 21st Century Community Learning Centers (afterschool and summer)
- Foundation STEM grants
- PTO/PTA budgets for classroom enrichment
Quantity discounts are available for multi-classroom orders. Ask us for a quote.