Big Event = Big Success

Just call me the most fabulous, hardworking, part-time teacher EVER! (this week, anyway)

As you know, my seventh graders have been working on a project called "The Big Event," where they were asked to apply various math skills to planning a real life event at their school. Below are some samples from my creative students. Tomorrow is presentation day. This project was designed by yours truly-Steal it!

First, the kids had to come up with 5 events they thought a 7th grader might like to have happen at their school. Next, they conducted their own survey and graphed their results.




Each group had a budget of $20,000.00 to spend on their event. They kept track of their expenses by using this "budget sheet." (great opportunity to have a mini-lesson on balancing a checkbook)



The groups also had to purchase food items in "bulk" and create proportions to find the price of each item, then sell the items to make a profit.



I am a big fan of taking the kids outside of the classroom to create different learning opportunities. Call me crazy, but I find that kids have some odd motivation to learn things when they are not in a room where they are "supposed" to learn things--if that makes any sense at all. My next step was to have the students choose a location for their event. They had to choose a location on school grounds. Once selected, we took a mini field trip down the stairs to measure the gym and auditorium to find the area and perimeter of the space. The kids used this information to figure out how many people they could fit in their space.



Next, students created an architectural layout of their event. They came out great!




Rough Draft





Okay, so I will always be a language arts teacher at heart. And because of my profound love of words, I made the little stinkers write me a little something!