This activity is based on Linda Booth Sweeney & Dennis Meadows “Harvest” from The Systems Thing Playbook, a collection of wonderful exercises and simulations for guiding children (and adults) through the process of thinking about how interconnected systems work together. It is a thoroughly wonderful book, and this mathematical investigation would not be possible without it.
The basic idea is this: the students in your class are divided into groups, each of which represents a fishing boat. E