The "Big Dinner" in math...

Our class recently completed "The Big Dinner" in math class.  This is one of two "context units" that we will complete this year.  Moving away from our Everyday Math materials for several weeks, we have been immersed in authentic problem solving and mathematical thinking, arranged around questions that are given to math partners to ponder.  The unit began with students having to figure out how much a 24 pound turkey would cost if the price was $1.25 per pound.  Partnerships explored how to figure this out and created a "poster" displaying their strategies.  As a class, we then had a "gallery walk" to see all of the work and conducted a "math congress" to discuss the different ways that the question was solved and the use of efficient strategies within the problem solving.   Specifically targeting multiplication and the use of a ratio table, this unit also incorporated time, money and other math concepts.  Here are some pictures from another day of "The Big Dinner" (towards the end) when the class was "cooking" the turkey.  They had to figure out how long to cook it, given that a turkey needs fifteen minutes per pound to cook.  Take a look at the posters and strategies!