Potential problem: After designing your own taco truck, use any method to determine the following:
- Area of each item included in your taco truck, your taco truck, and the exterior.
- Perimeter of each item included in your taco truck, your taco truck, and the exterior.
- Shape of each item included in your taco truck, your taco truck, and the exterior.
This picture problem includes a variety of topics that can be covered through mathematics as well as language arts, health, social studies, and even science. Instead of focusing on the usual “boring” math problems, I’d use this taco truck long-term project to teach area and perimeter, culture, food options, and language arts (writing and reading).
The CCSS-Math that this picture problem could address include:
- 3.MD.C.7: Relate area to the operations of multiplication and addition.
- 4.MD.A.3: Apply the area and perimeter formulas for rectangles in real world and mathematical problems.
Some standards from different content area that this picture problem could address includes:
- RI.4.7: Interpret information presented visually, orally, or quantitatively (e.g., in charts, graphs, diagrams, timelines, animations, or interactive elements on Web pages) and explain how the information contributes to an understanding of the text in which it appears.
- RI.4.9: Integrate information from two texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably.
I would use this post to teach culturally through the different context that it provides students. Often times, students are used to the usual procedural mathematics problems; or those unrealistic word problems where someone buys 70+ watermelons. Instead, I want to provide my students with a culturally different approach. Instead of using the basic units or blocks to find area and perimeter, I would have my students work on this long-term project to develop a blueprint of what they would want their taco truck to look like; including dimensions, perimeter, and area. Through this process, students would be doing research on what a taco truck is, where they can be found, and reflect on their presence in their community in social studies or language arts. Additionally, students could research the recipes to make the perfect food item-menu for their taco truck during science or health.
Hi Melissa,
I love this idea for a math problem. If you ever wanted to use the same cultural idea in a higher grade level, you could have students build a taco truck using cardboard, asking them not measure everything before they measure it (this way they don’t end up with nice whole numbers). Then you could ask them to sort of lay a coordinate plane over their taco truck, graph the corner points of the truck that fall into each quadrant and then have them find the area of the truck that falls into each quadrant. This way it still incorporates the idea of area, which would probably be a good review for most students and gets them working with the coordinate plane and graphing as well.
The standard that would align with this is CCSS.Math.6.NS.8 – Solve real-world and mathematical problems by graphing points in all
four quadrants of the coordinate plane. Include use of coordinates and
absolute value to find distances between points with the same first
coordinate or the same second coordinate.
Thank you for your post,
Kristin