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Cost Effective Cupcakes
Can you make the most delicious and cost effective cupcakes?
The Assignment
The Rules
Recipe Planner
Task Assignment Organizer
Rubric
Student Sample Answers
Sample 1
Red Velvet Cupcakes: Flour
Robin Hood Brand
Cost of bag including tax: $7.11
The cost of flour per cupcake: 3.3¢This is the winner per cupcake but is the most expensive bag due to weight. The student should choose this if the budget permits.
No Name Brand
Cost of bag including tax: $5.71
The cost of flour per cupcake: 3.4¢Five Roses Brand
The cost of flour per cupcake: 5¢
This the cheapest bag of flour (lowest weight) but cost the most per cupcake. The student should only choose this option if there is no more room in the budget for the Robin Hood Brand or the No Name Brand.
Vegan Chocolate Chip Cupcakes: Dairy-Free Chocolate Chips
Preliminary research shows that a cup of chocolate chips weighs 182.4g. The recipe asks for half a cup:
PC Decadent 1kg
Cost of bag including tax: $8.92
The cost of chocolate chips per cupcake: 0.30¢PC Decadent 226g
Cost of 2 bags including tax: $6.76
The cost of chocolate chips per cupcake: 0.23¢To create 30 cupcakes according to the recipe, we will need 228g of chocolate chips. Choosing this bag size would require the purchase of 2 bags, though despite this, it is the most cost effective option in creating the batch at 0.23¢ per cupcake.
No Name 225g
Cost of 2 boxes including tax: $8.34
The cost of chocolate chips per cupcake: 0.28¢Black Forest Cupcake: Red Wine Vinegar
Rationale: The Cost Effective Cupcake
Our rich summative task is geared toward the grade 8 strand Number Sense and Numeration, and covers the following overall expectations:
- Solve problems involving whole numbers, decimal numbers, fractions, and integers, using a variety of computational strategies;
- Solve problems by using proportional reasoning in a variety of meaningful contexts
Our task has been broken down into three distinct sections. These are outlined in the three-part lesson. The minds-on section introduces the task by presenting a relatable and engaging situation; our class is having a party and you have to provide 30 cupcakes, 1 for each member. Students will have to research a recipe of their choosing (starting from scratch), listing all ingredients necessary, and estimating the cost of each. One extremely important factor is that each group can only spend up to $30.00, including taxes on cupcake ingredients. As a class, we will take a trip to a local grocery store to research prices of individual ingredients.
With the information gathered, students can then calculate the unit cost of creating their cupcakes. Their presentation will consist of tables, sample work, visuals, videos and other media approved by the teacher.
We chose to focus of this strand because there are a lot of real-world connections that grade 8 students will come across in their lives. Creating a budget based on limited resources and planning are non-curricular lessons that are quite applicable to real life situations such as grocery shopping, clothing shopping, planning a party, shopping for a cell phone, etc. Students get to plan, contrast and compare a variety of prices in units that are comparable. This particular topic relating to food is one that all students can relate to; it is a comfortable topic.
On an academic level, students practice problem solving skills in a real life situation. They work together with their peers to compare values and quantities to find which ones are most reasonable for the problems that they are solving.
By the end of this task, our students would have gained mathematical skills such as solving problems using whole numbers and decimals, percentages and rates, as well as estimation. Our students would have gained these and some social skills through collaboration on this real world activity.