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New-Tritional Info (Updated!)

Should restaurants rewrite menus in terms of exercise?

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New-Tritional Info (Updated!)

Should restaurants rewrite menus in terms of exercise?

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Check it out! This lesson was just updated in September 2024, and we hope you love the new and improved version. If you've already prepped an earlier version, fear not, you can still find those here through Thursday December 5, 2024.

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NewTritional Info - Student Handout.pdf
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NewTritional Info - Teacher Guide.pdf
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2023-2024 Versions

In the fall of 2024, Citizen Math released updated versions of every lesson in our library, plus a few new ones! We know you may have already prepped an earlier version or planned a repeat of last year, so we're continuing to make these earlier versions available through Thursday December 5, 2024.

You can find the new lessons through the regular search, and we hope you love them as much as we do. You can read more about these updates in Our Community.

Should fast food restaurants rewrite their menus in terms of exercise? According to the McDonald’s menu, a Big Mac contains 540 calories. But what does that really mean...and would it be more helpful to describe this as “65 minutes of running”?

In this lesson, students write and evaluate expressions to determine how long it takes to burn off foods from McDonald’s and debate the pros and cons of including this information on fast food menus.

REAL WORLD TAKEAWAYS

  • The body gets energy from food. The amount of energy that a food contains is measured in calories.
  • When a body exercises, the number of calories that it burns depends on the type of activity that it does and its weight.
  • When people order foods at restaurants, they may not know how many calories they contain or what the calories mean. Rewriting menus in terms of minutes of exercise provided might be helpful to diners.

MATH OBJECTIVES

  • Use rate and ratio reasoning to solve real-world problems
  • Write and evaluate an algebraic expression
  • Use various strategies (including solving a one-step equation) to answer a real-world question
Great anytime, including at the beginning of a unit before students have any formal introduction to the topic.
Grade 6
Equations & Expressions
Grade 6
Equations & Expressions
Content Standards 6.EE.6 Use variables to represent numbers and write expressions when solving a real-world or mathematical problem; understand that a variable can represent an unknown number, or, depending on the purpose at hand, any number in a specified set. 6.EE.7 Solve real-world and mathematical problems by writing and solving equations of the form x + p = q and px = q for cases in which p, q and x are all nonnegative rational numbers.
Mathematical Practices MP.1 Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. MP.2 Reason abstractly and quantitatively. MP.3 Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. MP.7 Look for and make use of structure.

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Great anytime, including at the beginning of a unit before students have any formal introduction to the topic.

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Great anytime, including at the beginning of a unit before students have any formal introduction to the topic.

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