Creating a Class Cookbook to Inspire Critical Thinking in Math

Teachers today are faced with many teaching challenges, including how to offer hands-on learning experiences that support critical thinking skills while also meeting the needs of a diverse group of students. Whatever the chosen format, educators are tasked with teaching a variety of core standard skills that promote academic growth.

With all this in mind, I wanted to design an activity for my math class that would engage all of my students in an authentic learning experience—one that also put a spotlight on real-world skills and critical thinking.

I decided to ground my lesson in a cookbook. Cooking is something my students could relate to, and it was something they had explicitly expressed interest in. I wanted to lean on their interest, as I knew that would make them more likely to take academic risks in the assignment. First, I had to hook my students on the idea, and from there, their interest grew. I call this project “the classroom cookbook.”

creating the COOKBOOK

The lesson hook: To cultivate student interest in the activity, I began by asking students to share their experiences with cooking: Had they ever read a cookbook? Did they know how to measure ingredients? Whom did they like to cook with? Whom did they like to cook for? Students also shared experiences of watching other people cook a favorite recipe.

From there, we began creating an anchor chart that tracked common key considerations when cooking: What ingredients do you need? What measuring tools do you need? How much time do you need for the recipe? Will this recipe make enough for everyone? These questions began connecting my students’ lived experiences with the more logistical and mathematical components of cooking.

Introducing the digital cookbook: Once students were excited to be talking about cooking, I introduced the actual activity: We would be working together as a class to create a digital cookbook. Each student would be responsible for creating one Google Slide that included the name of their recipe, why they chose it, and pictures of the finished dish. I encouraged students to consider a family recipe that had some cultural meaning for them to inspire deeper conversations and connections among their classmates.

In my classroom, we completed the activity over the course of a few days, and some students actually made the recipes at home and took photos. This really took the project to a new level, as it incorporated hands-on experience and engaged students’ families in the work.

However, students could always look up pictures online to include, depending on how much time they had to complete the project and the accessibility of making a recipe at home.

But it wasn’t just the recipe they were sharing. They also had to create a math word problem that existed in the context of their recipe. Students needed to create an original multistep word problem and include it on the slide, with the solution hidden. This was where students really connected with the academic work we’d been doing on multistep word problems.

Not only would they have to be able to solve a multistep problem, but they would have to create one themselves, which required them to apply their problem-solving skills in a new way.

Creating original word problems: When it was time for students to create their word problems, I encouraged them to work in small groups and brainstorm ideas. Some students wrote problems that addressed how a recipe would change if two or three times as many people were going to eat it. Some students wrote problems about how much a recipe would cost based on prices of different ingredients they looked up online. Others wrote problems that addressed how someone could make the recipe if they didn’t have all the necessary measuring cups but only a few.

Students had to think critically and ask questions as they wrote their problems. I walked around to each small group to support them with their problem-solving, and once each student had written their problem, I encouraged them to solve it and make sure it made sense.

Now that the problems were finalized, students added all of their content to their slide and it was time to share.

Presenting the class cookbook. I compiled all of the student slides into one presentation, and then each student had the opportunity to present their slide. Each student came to the front of the room, talked a bit about their recipe, and then presented their word problem. The other students in the class then had a few minutes to independently solve the problem. The presenter got to call on a classmate to share their solution and reveal if their answer was correct or not.

I then called on a few more students to share their solving steps so we could engage in a discussion about the different approaches students could take to solving word problems.

Alternatively, you could engage students in a gallery walk: Each student pulls their slide up on their Chromebook and leaves it open on their desk. Students walk around the room with their notebooks, read each slide, and then attempt to solve. Students reveal the answer on the Chromebook to check their work and hide the answer again before walking away.

If you choose to do the gallery walk, I would encourage you to still engage in a whole class discussion so that you and your students can focus on the problem-solving approaches each student used.

This activity is beneficial to students in so many ways. Not only does it allow students to get excited about applying math skills to a real-world situation that they all have experience with, but also it allows students to share their personal stories with one another. The combination of connection, critical thinking, and problem-solving that happens makes this activity worthwhile for students and teachers.