Using Recipes to Reinforce
Sunshine State Standards:
Materials for each group:
Cooperative groups of 4-5 students
- Read books with recipes
to students. Cucumber Soup by Vickie Leigh Krudwig, The Seven
Silly Eaters by Mary Ann Hobermann and Cook-a-Doodle-Doo
by Janet Stevens were used for this lesson.
- Have students take the recipe
from the end of Cucumber Soup and check to see if there are enough ingredients
to make enough cucumber soup for the whole class.
- These calculations can be
made in the following ways:
use a function table to calculate how much the recipe would have to
be increased or
divide the number that could be fed by the number of students in the
- Write the new recipe on
the chart paper provided.
- Have each group choose a
person to present their recipe.
- Assess students as part
of group presentation
- Have students identify terms
that were discovered in the literature selections such as
- cooking terms(mix, stir,
- measuring tools (cup,
- patterns from the books
read so far.
- Using the strawberry shortcake
recipe from Cook-a-Doodle-Doo, increase it to feed the entire
- Circulate around the room,
listening for any difficulties.
- Give each group a different
pancake recipe. Because each recipe serves a different number of people.
Groups must work together to come up with appropriate amounts of each
ingredient that would probably be different than every other group in
- Have the students write
the recipes on chart paper to be shared with the class.
Have each group make a presentation
to the class explaining how and what they did to increase the recipe they
were given so that they would have the correct amount of ingredients to
make their pancakes for the whole class. This gives the teacher an instant
opportunity to assess accuracy as well as straighten out misconceptions.
Ask each student to reflect
on the relevance of these kinds of tasks by writing what he/she learned
in math class today. Have students share what they wrote, first in their
individual groups, then have several students volunteer to read their
entries to the class.