Task 1: There is an average of 150 balloons that take part in Balloonfest every year. If 1/4 of these balloons had complications and could not race about how many balloons would take flight?
Task 2: A ride on a hot air balloon costs about $200 per person for 1 hour. If a family of 4 wanted to take a ride for 1 and a half hours how much would it cost for the whole family?
This is where I work, right on the cornor of Michigan Ave and Grand River. It's a local coffeeshop that has been serving the Howell area for over 10 years. A task about the number of coffee drinks it serves per day or how many coffee beans get ground each day would be a good way to incorporate math.
If these tasks were given to students in lower to mid-elementary grades, I think they would be really good examples of higher-level tasks! I like how the first task deals with having a remainder instead of dividing out evenly. This would require children to be able to apply the use of fractions while also understanding that you can have some "left over". The same is true of the second task- students would need to carefully read the problem, think critically, and use division to figure out the correct answer. The only suggestion I have to make the second task a little more higher-level would be to maybe include some type of open-ended question that could have more than one possible answer.
ReplyDeleteYour other pictures & task ideas are great as well, using something like a parade and a store that most of the children are familiar with would make it easy for them to connect to the problem!
As Emily mentioned- in the first problem there is a remainder so students will then have to determine whether to round up or down as there cannot be a portion of a balloon that does not participate in the festival (they will have to realize this from the information/context of the problem). Thus, there is potentially more than one answer depending on how students decide to finish the problem- making the task higher level! In the second problem however, while the problem is not a clean answer (there will be some remainders etc), there is only one possible answer, which typically means the task is more of a lower level task. Maybe the task could be reworded to not include how many people are in the family as to make students conclude different answers depending on family size or maybe not include how long of a ride they want to take so students have to determine what an appropriate length ride may be etc. Otherwise the tasks and pictures are all realistic and could definitely be used to relate to student lives/community!
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