Community Activities and Businesses Tasks

Overview: Tasks Related to Community Activities and Businesses

This set of tasks draws on community and business activities and contexts relevant to students’ daily lives. Students’ experiences with community activities (e.g., selling girl scout cookies) and businesses (e.g., ordering and eating at local restaurants) could be leveraged for learning with these tasks. The tasks engage students in mathematical modeling (Mathematical Practice 4) through activities including:

  • Estimating a reasonable unit amount (e.g., serving size per person), and calculating associated supplies/ingredients.
  • Estimating and planning for inventory.
  • Determining prices to charge and/or selecting items to purchase, with costs and other constraints considered.
  • Communicating final plans and models, material needs, and/or costs to a potential funder.

Specific mathematical content and other mathematical practices connected to tasks are described within the lesson overview of each task.

Additional task suggestions:

  • Analyzing claims that appear in the press/media.
  • Estimating, calculating, and planning for needs in a crisis (e.g., water in Flint or other affected communities).
  • Determining best routes for delivery given sets of constraints.

Community Activities and Businesses Tasks

Girl Scout Cookie Task Overview

Students are asked to help a Girl Scout Troop determine how many boxes of each type of Girl Scout Cookie they should have available for their annual sale. They will use past data about cookie preferences and amount sold to develop a plan for the sale. Concepts and skills used include multiplication of fractions, estimation, reading charts, and making, using, and revising reasonable assumptions.

Student Task Documents

We are including both PDF and MSWord versions of the Student Task document. The MSWord version will allow you to easily edit the task if you wish to do so. The PDF version will maintain the original format.

Lesson Slides

The Lesson Slides include the different routines outlined in the Lesson Overview. The last slide is an extension of the task and is colored-coded in blue to help identify it as such. Additional slides are attached at the end of the lesson slides to extent the task and to provide non-percent representations of cookie preferences.

Girl Scout Cookie Sales Files

Task Overview

In this task students will explain to a restaurant owner how they would determine the price of guacamole to be served at the restaurant. Students will use and develop their understanding of fractions, working with money, multiplication and division, and estimation.

Student Task Documents

We are including both PDF and MSWord versions of the Student Task document. The MSWord version will allow you to easily edit the task if you wish to do so. The PDF version will maintain the original format. There are four tasks included. Tasks A and B are the same except for the options and numbers used. We have also included a copy of the ingredient and recipe slides.

Lesson Slides

The Lesson Slides include the different routines and tasks outlined in the Lesson Overview. Task B is highlighted in green and is a higher-level version of Task A.

Guacamole Pricing Task Documents

Overview

The pupusa making task asks students to choose two pupusa recipes and determine a price for one pupusa for each recipe. Content standards in this task focus on measurement, operations with whole numbers and fractions including decimal fractions, estimation and rounding.

Student Task Documents

We are including both PDF and MSWord versions of the Student Task document. The MSWord version will allow you to easily edit the task if you wish to do so. The PDF version will maintain the original format.

Lesson Slides

The Lesson Slides ask students to first think types of food their families like to make and share that may be related to their own culture. It then introduces pupusa through videos and discussion. The slides also replicates the information given on the Student Task.

Student Task Documents

Teacher Solution Paths

This file contains four teacher solution paths for the pupusa task.