While researching for our parabola unit I stumbled upon the project posted by Julie Reulbach on her blog I Speak Math. If you don’t follow her on Twitter, you should! I adapted her activity a little to make it go along with Clash of Clans and carried the theme throughout the activity.
I shot the orange spikey stones (because if you say balls in front of freshmen…) at students as they walked in the door starting about a week out. They were pretty excited to get to shoot the catapults themselves. Many of them also play Clash of Clans or Clash Royale so they enjoyed that part too. The activity is frustrating for some of them who like to have their hand held through each step. We have them work together at tables and only intervene if the productive struggle is no longer productive.
I have attached all of my documents for this project. Remember, this is modified from Julie’s project. You can get all of her originals here.
This is a printable bulls-eye. I feel like I can use the castle image in the middle since it’s a screen-shot I took from the game. If you feel this is questionable, then take the image off.
Desmos activity This is updated from Julie’s as well. I included the Clash of Clans images (possible copyright issues here – sorry) but it makes it more engaging for the students.
I plan to update this project for next year with some spreadsheet activities.
Make Math Not Suck 
Thank you so much for a great activity! We did it in my Algebra 1 class today and ALL groups were engaged and success. For the catapults we used two tongue depressors rubber banded together with a pencil between to act as the fulcrum. Their spikey rock was a pom pom. As a former science teacher turned math teacher this is the kind of math I love to have students do!
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