Career Solutions Publishing has partnered with Active Learning Labs to introduce this real-world business simulation for high school students.
Students will learn the concept of Ratios and Proportions in depth by solving a real-world challenge. In Cookie Inc. - Recipe Ratios lab, students will run a cookie cart business that sells the delicious cookies that Grandma used to prepare. To run the business, students must analyze the ingredients and their ratios of Grandma's cookie first. Since Grandma uses her units of measurement such as cups and tablespoons, students will use Math to convert these units to the grocer's units such as pounds and gallons. Using the rate card provided by the grocer, they will find the cost of preparing one cookie and then decide how many cookies they can prepare using the $1500 invested by their grandma. Students will also learn about planning & purchasing and use those ideas to run the business for three months.
Their objective is to get a minimum profit of $3000 by the end of the third month of their business and use that money to pay the deposit needed to start a bigger cookie store inside a mall.
The lab has two versions - a single-player version in which all students in the classroom will run the lab independently, and a paired learning version in which the classroom will be divided into teams of two and both team members divide the work and collaborate, to win the challenge.
The duration of the lab is two days (1 hour per day), on the first day, students will run individual tasks to gain knowledge in ratio concepts, business basics, and equitation building. On the second day, the scores that the students gained from the first day's activities will be used to split the classroom into teams and each team will run the three-month business.
Students in high school can master applied math and business basics using this lab.
A few survey questions to understand the current knowledge levels and interests of the students
Common Core: MATH
Write, read, and evaluate expressions in which letters stand for numbers.
Interpret and compute quotients of fractions, and solve word problems involving division of fractions by fractions, e.g., by using visual fraction models and equations to represent the problem. *For example, create a story context for (2/3) ÷ (3/4) and use a visual fraction model to show the quotient; use the relationship between multiplication and division to explain that (2/3) ÷ (3/4) = 8/9 because 3/4 of 8/9 is 2/3. (In general, (a/b) ÷ (c/d) = ad/bc.) How much chocolate will each person get if 3 people share 1/2 lb of chocolate equally? How many 3/4-cup servings are in 2/3 of a cup of yogurt? How wide is a rectangular strip of land with length 3/4 mi and area 1/2 square mi?*.
Understand the concept of a ratio and use ratio language to describe a ratio relationship between two quantities. *For example, "The ratio of wings to beaks in the bird house at the zoo was 2:1, because for every 2 wings there was 1 beak." "For every vote candidate A received, candidate C received nearly three votes."*
Understand the concept of a unit rate a/b associated with a ratio a:b with b ≠ 0, and use rate language in the context of a ratio relationship. *For example, "This recipe has a ratio of 3 cups of flour to 4 cups of sugar, so there is 3/4 cup of flour for each cup of sugar." "We paid $75 for 15 hamburgers, which is a rate of $5 per hamburger."*
Use ratio and rate reasoning to solve real-world and mathematical problems, e.g., by reasoning about tables of equivalent ratios, tape diagrams, double number line diagrams, or equations.
Make tables of equivalent ratios relating quantities with whole-number measurements, find missing values in the tables, and plot the pairs of values on the coordinate plane. Use tables to compare ratios.
Solve unit rate problems including those involving unit pricing and constant speed. *For example, if it took 7 hours to mow 4 lawns, then at that rate, how many lawns could be mowed in 35 hours? At what rate were lawns being mowed?*
Compute unit rates associated with ratios of fractions, including ratios of lengths, areas and other quantities measured in like or different units. *For example, if a person walks 1/2 mile in each 1/4 hour, compute the unit rate as the complex fraction ^1/2/1/4 miles per hour, equivalently 2 miles per hour*.
Recognize and represent proportional relationships between quantities.