Math class turned “restaurant” for real-life lesson
Students act as servers and diners in a restaurant simulation for a real-world math experience in class.
Westlake Middle School seventh grade students in Ms. Myers’ class turned their classroom into a “restaurant” for their math lesson on percentages and real-world math scenarios. Students have been learning how to represent, understand, analyze and solve percent problems. These problems have included tax, tips, discounts, markup/markdown errors and simple interest. In this hands-on activity, students took on the roles of diners and servers in two different restaurant settings, which were sit-down and fast food. Servers had to calculate the cost of each diner’s food, tax, make change and determine what percent tip they were left. Diners were tasked with ordering food, checking their bills to ensure the cost of food and tax were correct, and determining a tip.
“It was fun and engaging while giving me the opportunity to practice tax, tip, and discount,” Student Nico Salhoff said about the lesson.
