Today Grade 5 students had the opportunity to bake a cake and learn about fractions as part of the process.

Students began by completing various math problems in order to determine the quantity of an ingredient required for their specific cake.

Example:

Ingredient 1:

Bennett had 1 & 1/12 hours to play. He walked to the park for 1/2 of an hour. He played at the park for 1/3 of an hour. He ran to a friend’s house for 1/6 of an hour. What fraction of an hour does he have to play at his friend’s if it takes him 1/4 of an hour to walk home from his friend’s house?

The answer (to the above problem) provides the amount of vegetable oil needed for the cake.

Students completed a series of math questions, unlocking the ingredient amounts needed to make a successful cake.

The girls then answered questions related to their recipes, followed a procedure, while also making a couple of hypotheses about the project.

The results and conclusion section contained the following:

This should be in paragraph form. Please tell us what your results were and attempt to explain them. Was anything surprising? What are the implications of your results? Were your hypotheses correct? Why to you think you got the results you did (hypothesize)? Where may there have been human error? How could we improve this experiment? After seeing your results, what future experiment could you conduct to build on your knowledge?

This hands-on multisensory project clearly captivated the students. After baking the cakes, students will have the opportunity to taste the delicious results of their math.

-Special thanks to Food Program Manager, Tali Biale, who helped set up the preparation and baking components of this activity.