Plan A Party! (Day 1)

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SWBAT apply math to real world situations accurately

Big Idea

Math in context makes much more sense


10 minutes

Who can remind me about what problems the boys in the video were trying to solve yesterday? What did they use to solve it?

We discuss how we can use math to do all sorts of things in the real world, including planning a party and how a party can include many concepts at one time.

Yesterday we thought about activities and how much time each activity would take. What kind of math were we using to solve that problem? That’s right, elapsed time! Today we are going to work on party ideas, budgets and expense plans as well as guest lists.

Students continue working in their groups of 2-3 planning their party.


40 minutes

Today you are going to work in partners to come up with a list of possible places to have your party. You will need to narrow your list down to 2 ideas and then come up with a guest list, include your activities from yesterday, costs for your activities (and food if you’re having it) and how you’re going to pay for the party. We will use our computers to research costs so that we get all of the information we need (MP1)! You might need to use what you know about time to plan new activities or make adjustments to your activities, and you may need to multiply and add to figure out the cost, per person, of a ticket to get into a theme park or of food items. You will have to decide what math you need for each thing you plan (MP5)

Students have to navigate grocery websites to research the cost of specific food items, party websites to look at decorations and toys, or theme parks if they chose to have a party there as 1 of their two options. I am requiring them to research and plan two different options so that they can compare their two options to pick the best one that fits into their proposed budget.


5 minutes

Who can tell me about some of their challenges today? How did you solve the problems you guys ran into?

We discuss how we used various math operations to solve different problems and also how packages of items aren’t always sold in the exact amount that we need, so we had to determine how many we had to buy to have enough. The biggest issue students encountered today was figuring out how many items they needed when they came in package amounts that didn't exactly match the amount they needed.