Reply To: Lesson 7-1: Hot Chocolate Task – Discussion

[Merryl Polak]

Working in a middle school, I could see this lesson being used as an introduction for the concept of unit rate, as in 3 scoops per ONE glass of hot chocolate. It would be interesting to ask students what their idea of one means. In other words, see which students might state that each scoop would make 1/3 of a cup of hot chocolate. Instead of teaching old fashioned algorithms, once students recognize the multiplicative relationship between each glass and 3, they would be able to answer questions of how many scoops per glass AND how many glasses per 1/3 scoop.

[Merryl Polak]

Working in a middle school, I could see this lesson being used as an introduction for the concept of unit rate, as in 3 scoops per ONE glass of hot chocolate. It would be interesting to ask students what their idea of one means. In other words, see which students might state that each scoop would make 1/3 of a cup of hot chocolate. Instead of teaching old fashioned algorithms, once students recognize the multiplicative relationship between each glass and 3, they would be able to answer questions of how many scoops per glass AND how many glasses per 1/3 scoop.