I use this as I teach my students to solve word problems. Too often our students are told to read a word problem until they understand it, but if they do not know what the word problem is saying that strategy will not work. Since our school does a lot of dissecting/annotating/close reading of text I wanted to incorporate that same thought into math.
There are five real life problems that get students thinking about money, mileage, and life. Students are given the problem and they need to come up with extra questions to solve to find a solution.
Students are starting up their own restaurant based around pancakes. The students will create their budget, their restaurant layout, the recipe and increased recipe for a class that is coming to eat (avg 30 students), they need to market and advertise, and lastly create an explanation of starting a business.
Students research the different ways to see their favorite channels and how much it would cost them over a two year period, in order to determine which is the cheapest option for them to save the most money!
Students create a scale drawing of what they think school would be like in 2050, then create the model to scale. Lastly, they need to keep a budget of what will be in the classroom.