Selling Cake Pops Day 2 of 5

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Students will be able to write and solve equations from a business model.

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Warm up and Homework Review

10 minutes

I include Warm ups with a Rubric as part of my daily routine. My goal is to allow students to work on Math Practice 3 each day. Grouping students into homogeneous pairs provides an opportunity for appropriately differentiated math conversations. The Video Narrative explains today's Warm Up- Selling Cake Pops Day 2* which asks students to determine which of two people have a better lawn mowing business plan.  This warm up problem came from this great selection of open ended math questions.



*Today's warm up questions came from this website

Writing Profit Expressions Given Tax and Market Fees

17 minutes

Revenue from Cake Pops

We begin today by looking at the revenue brought in if we sell the cake pops for $1 each.  The term revenue may need to be clarified as some students may be unfamiliar with it.  This is a simple expression at 1p or just p.  I then ask them to determine how much money they actually made.  In the previous lesson, we determined that is cost 32 cents to make one cake pop so they will get 0.68p.  

Other Costs

Next, I point out that there are other costs that need to be taken into consideration.  The students make a list of other possible costs which we narrow down to the market fees and taxes.  We look at the costs for vending at first the Boise Farmer's Market and then the Caldwell Farmer's Market.  Each of these will follow the Note Card procedure.  One thing to note is that there are several different ways to model the costs for the Caldwell market (Math Practice 4).  This will provide a wonderful discussion opportunity as the students will be required to pick one model to use as a class.  Please see the PowerPoint for specific procedures and scaffolding.

Profit from Cake Pops:

The final task is for students to determine the total profit from both markets given all the costs.  Several models, simplified and un-simplified, may come up so the note card is a great procedure here as well. 


Using the expanded version, I will have them identify what each portion means in regards to our cake pops.  A great extension would be to ask the students to write an expression with nothing simplified.  It will be LONG.  Another possible extension would be for you to put that extended expression on the board and ask the students to identify what each portion represents (Math Practice 7).  


* The cake pop recipe come from  

Exit Ticket

3 minutes

I use an exit ticket each day as a quick formative assessment to make note of student learning as a result of the lesson.  

Today's exit ticket asks students to write a profit expression give the following information:  The revenue for a lemonade stand is 0.50x.  The cost is 0.15x + 2.  Find an expression that represents the profit. 


This homework provides an additional market to model with expressions.  It also has several problems that ask the students to use their expressions to find the total profit if 40 or 300 cake pops are sold.  Finally, they are given an entirely new situation, a lawn mowing business, and are asked to write an expression to model its profit.   These problems ensure that the students are confident in the skills discussed during class.