“When will I ever use this?” Yummy Math Helps Teachers Answer This Question

“When will I ever use this?” It’s one of the most common questions math teachers hear from students. While there are lots of ways we can respond to this question, we believe the best answer comes from showing, rather than telling, our students why math is relevant to their lives.

Yummy Math is a web resource that will help you do this. All of the activities you’ll find on the site use real-world problems and scenarios that are not only familiar and engaging to students, but require them to use math to solve them.

Everything you’ll find on Yummy Math corresponds with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Process (NCTM) Standards and the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for Mathematical Practice. Yummy Math is also in the process of adding CCSS correlation to every activity on the site. New lessons are added a few times a week and all of them are completely free.

Here are two examples of the types of activities you’ll find on the site:

Boorito
For Halloween 2013 Chipotle (a fast-casual Mexican restaurant chain) is offering $3 burritos to any customer that comes in dressed in their Halloween costume after 4 p.m. Even better, Chipotle will donate up to one million dollars of the proceeds from the $3 items to the Chipotle Cultivate Foundation. This foundation is dedicated to creating a sustainable, healthful, equitable food future.

• I wonder how likely it is that Chipotle will be able raise one million dollars in one evening? Take a couple minutes, first individually and then with a partner, to think about whether this goal is even reasonable? Write some of your observations and thoughts below.

•What information would be helpful to know in order to figure out the probability of Chipotle reaching their goal? Record your thoughts below.

Thinking About Columbus
Can you imagine sailing off to the West, into an empty looking ocean, to find what your captain believes is a good route to the Indian subcontinent?  This was a pretty risky navigational feat. Luckily the ships experienced good weather on their trip to the Caribbean.

Use some of what we know now about navigation to examine this trek and do some reasoning and experimentation with the data. To download the entire lesson plan, click here.

These are only two amongst dozens of math activities you’ll find on Yummy Math, so be sure to stop by and browse their resource library.