Title: Fractions, Decimals, and Percents in our Daily Life: Activity 4 Linking up w/ Cooking!

Grade/Level: 4

Duration/Length: Three Weeks (Presenting one final activity)

Prerequisite Knowledge: Prior “Real World Lessons in Fractions” Activities

Student Outcomes:

Students will:

· Show an understanding of the relation between each math concept

· Orally identify fractions, decimals, and percents

· Manually create the above

· Keep a record in their Math Journal

Materials/Resources/Printed Materials:

Activity 4: Cooking Up Math

Ingredients for Cookies

Recipe

Bowl for each group

Spoons for each group

Oven

Baking Sheets

Spatula

Cleaning Supplies and Hand washing stuff.

Aprons

Math Journal

Brief Overview:

In this unit, the students will use food, measurements, and math journals while preparing a simple recipe to introduce fractions, percentages, and decimals. They will demonstrate their understanding of the fractions, 1/1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/10, the decimals .1, .25, .5, .75, and the percentages 10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100 % by identifying, comparing, and representing these concepts using group reasoning, oral communication, group problem solving strategies, and cookie dough.

Reasoning and Proof: Our group wanted to find relevant ways to teach the math concepts through using the real world environs and situations that children will encounter. Our proof will be evident in the math journals that are provided by the students at the end of each quarter as well in how the students will respond to prompts during cookie time.

Connections: The students will learn how fractions, decimals, and percentages are used in the real world and how we can use them to our benefit as consumers. They will not only write down their conversions of these related numbers, but they will be able to use the manipulative to create cookies that reflect each fraction.

Representation: In this activity the process of taking a cookie recipe and using the children’s knowledge of fractions to create the cookie dough is the first step. Once the children complete this activity each child in each group will get a lump of dough and together we will use our dough and knives to create fractions (which eventually become cookies.) When the cookies are done baking we will eat the fractions and record our data in the math journals.

Activities: Activity 1: School Shopping for Bargains

Activity 2: Eating Out

Activity 3: TBA

Activity 4: Cooking With Fractions

Preparation: Have Hand Washing Area ready. Set out Aprons and Equipment. Make sure Math Journals are ready to go on desks. Preheat Oven.

Introduction:

First have all children wash their hands, put on aprons, and tie back hanging hair. Remind kids if they have to cough or sneeze to move away from the food or if they go to bathroom, to wash their hands before touching the food. Explain that we are making cookies today to bring together our prior lessons. Ask the kids what they know about fractions, decimals, and percents.

As needed form into groups of four students.

Part I:

Here is our recipe but we need to make enough whole cookies for our whole class (or parents or principal.) So we need to use our Math Journals to figure out what our cookie recipes should really look like. Once you have done the math, bring it to me and I will give you the ingredients for your cookies.

Granny Half’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe (makes 15 half cookies)

½ CUP Butter

1 egg

2 cups Flour

¼ cup Sugar

¼ tsp Baking Soda

¼ tsp salt

1/8 tsp salt

¼ cup Chocolate Chips

Cream butter, egg, and sugar until smooth. Add in flour, soda, and salt, then mix. Then add chocolate chips and vanilla and stir well.

Take a teaspoon and make small balls of cookie dough.

Cook for ½ an hour at 180 degrees

Part II: Cookie Dough

Once all groups have achieved “doughness” the teacher addresses the class.

“Each group needs to divide its dough in quarters then make the dough into circles

Each student will then use their dough to represent different fractions, decimals, or percentages as dictated by the teacher by oral or paper command)

After a few exercises in modeling, the cookie dough will be smoothed back into a full circle.

Then each student will create two or three representations from each cookie and record them in the math journal. Then we bake.

Activity 3 Out of the Oven & Review

Once the cookies are baked and cooled the students will get their math journals. Then the teacher will hold up cookie and ask the class to record/name its decimal, fraction, and percentages in this format “. 5 = ½ = 50%”. Then they will get to eat them. Yay!

I used the National Association of Science Website’s lesson plan frameworks to help me put my words in an academic format that would be understandable to all. I chose a lesson plan that was similar to my goal fro my fraction experience and re-wrote it into a sensory/motor activity to be used in a larger scale constructivist model.

The Mathematics Education Partnership Program (MEPP) Home Page, retrieved from http://www.nsa.gov/programs/mepp/es/frac39.pdf

http://www.nsa.gov/programs/mepp/esfrac.html on March 28th, 2003

Constructivist Math Project

Granny Half’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe (makes 15 half cookies)