As I was preparing a unit on expressions (translating, evaluating, and simplifying), I decided to branch out and include a real-world “problem” to entice students to see the benefit of writing equations and expressions.  I ended up creating a video detailing a pretty involved scenario in which students would need to sift through possible constants and variables.  At the end of the video, I asked the question – How can you model a possible solution to this problem?   Because my 5th grade son’s teacher is such a great sport, she offered to test the lesson in her classroom and we certainly found some interesting results.  Upon being asked to generate a model for the problem, all the students started drawing these elaborate schematics and asked if they could create them in 3-D.  It became very evident that students aren’t quite comprehending the numerous meanings of math models.  Looking over Henry Pollak’s discussions on math modeling for the common core, I decided to make a follow-up video helping students see that mathematical modeling can take many different forms.   Here is the link to the original video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXBL79tlBg4.  I would love for teachers to try showing this video to their students and see if their misconceptions for math modeling are the same.  The youtube link for the math modeling video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iew9nppByKs&feature=youtu.be.