Calorie Cruncher -- Diet & Exercise Math Project

Hiking vs. Pizza Hut the epic showdown

Count the calories, make a fitness plan, watch weight, and practice linear inequalities in this fun and relevant 21st Century Math Project. Students will use authentic calorie data from common foods, popular fast food restaurants and also use calorie burning measurements for a variety of activities. In this middle or high school math project, students will look at meals and exercise in a completely different way as they help a cast of characters make dietary choices, plan meals and choose physical activities to remain fit.

Name: Calorie Cruncher

Suggested Grade Level: 7-12 (primarily Algebra 1 math skills)

Math Concepts: Creating and Solving Linear Inequalities

Interdisciplinary Connections: Nutrition, Exercise, Health, Physical Education

Teaching Duration: 3-5 Days (can be modified)

Cost: $5 for a 27 Page PDF (3 assignments, 1 project and Answer Key)

PDF Version: Calorie Cruncher @ TPT

The Product: Using the data provided in the assignment, students will create diet plans and fitness regiments tailored to the needs for five celebrities – all with very different demands.

I didn't know food gave you energy.

As a math teacher, I am use to seeing a wide range of clueless looks. The “kinda-clueless”, the “not sure if I’m clueless-clueless”, the “how did I get to school today clueless”, and on and on… If you really want to get some clueless looks visit the cafeteria and ask questions about their lunch. They can answer “What are you eating?” with great accuracy, but if you follow that up with “What are you really eating?” You get your first clueless look. Someone is bound to remember that the ingredients are on the label. May start to list them. Then you follow that up with a “What is bioforestationoxidefructoseacetaminefine? ( or whatever long scientific ingredient that you feel like pronouncing).  Not to pick on students, you’d get the same clueless look from adults. Heck, you’d get the same clueless look from me.

I hope McDonald's is in the common core.

Again, as is the case with most 21st Century Math Project  the challenge is choosing, appropriate and rigorous math content. When thinking about developing a project around this, I conceptualized it the same way one would think of a budget assignment. Money made, money spent. This thinking led me to developing this with inequalities. To build different skills relevant to inequalities I developed assignments where students are analyzing the choices of others, and then allow them the freedom to make choices themselves.

Although this could be a middle or high school math project (depending on the level of your students), I have grabbed a few appropriate common core standards from High School Algebra

-        --  Solve linear equations and inequalities in one variable, including equations with coefficients represented by letters.

-         -- Create equations and inequalities in one variable and use them to solve problems.

-         -- Represent constraints by equations or inequalities, and interpret solutions as viable or nonviable options in a modeling context.

You know I've got this overhead slide
with three types of inequality problems.
It's kinda dingy, I'll clean it and get it
over to ya.

The final project, creating diet and fitness plans for celebrities is an abstract application that needs some scaffolding. Thus I have included three assignments leading up to it that will help understand the task.

“Fast Food Calorie Count” – Using menus of Fast Food restaurants, students will help five people write inequalities to determine if their lunch is within their daily caloric limit, but the catch is they only eat a steady diet of fast food.

In this assignment, students will understand how many calories people consume and how it rarely fits into a plan that is watching their diet.

“Fitness Guru” – Using data of physical activity, students help five people write inequalities to determine if they will burn enough calories to reach their personal fitness goals.

In this assignment, students will see how much work it takes to burn calories. Most people operate under a misconception of how much exercise they need to maintain weight.

“Weight Watchers” – Using both sets of data, students will help five people write inequalities to determine if they will burn enough calories to reach their weight loss or weight gain goals.

In this assignment, students try to find the balance between diet and exercise to hit goals.

Certainly weight can be a touchy issue with young people on both ends of the spectrum. I’ve intentional written assignments and characters to subliminally go against stereotypes and keep the task focused on the math. 

EXTENSION: An easy extension would be for students to keep their own food journal and exercise log over a course of a week.  

Combat obesity and laziness with 21st Century Math Projects!

Cost of Smoking -- STEM-based Health Project

Kick Butts, Teachers! Kick Butts Hard.

Utilize tobacco use in an investigation of number sense, linear functions, and scatterplot in this 21st Century Math Project. Students will find out the startling truth behind the amount of cigarettes a smoker may use in their lifetime, the financial cost of the habit (including inflation), as well as the foretold effect on their health. I’ve never had students more engaged calculating math problems! The results of this project can have a lifelong impact on a learner (I’ve seen it)… the best part is they are discovering this on their own.

Name: Cost of Smoking – STEM-based Health Project

Suggested Grade Level: 7-12 (Algebra 1 skills)

Math Concepts: Patterns, Linear Equations, Percents, Operations and Scatterplot

Interdisciplinary Connections: Health, Personal Finance

Teaching Duration: 3-5 Days (can be modified)

Cost: $6 for a 24 page PDF (1 project with answer key) 

PDF Version: Cost of Smoking @ TPT

The Product: A PSA in which students use data they have calculated in their packet to persuade a target audience (elementary kids, smokers, Latinos, etc.) to stop or avoid smoking. 

How am I supposed to quit smoking,
have you seen my 7th Period?

Kick butts with the 21st Century Math Project that started it all. My parents were smokers. When I got to middle school I realized how much money they were actually spending on those stupid little cigarettes. They’d each burn through a pack a day without blinking. Money was tight, I didn’t understand it. Learning about the impacts on their health made me completely astonished. Why would anyone spend some much money to do this to themselves? I convinced myself my best chance to get them to quit was to not just tell them they were bad for them, surely they knew, but I thought I’d point out how much money they would save and showed them what other things we could use the money for. Eventually, they did decide to quit. Why, I’ll never know.

Now as a sixth-year high school teacher, I can better empathize with things like “stress”, I still was at a loss as to the amount of money people spent on the things. In college, project-based learning was emphasized heavily. I pitched an early idea of this project to a class. Developed an idea and took it with me into my first year. While that draft of this project was rough, I still distinctly remember kids being floored by the numbers. Kids want to show their moms. Perhaps a few decided to avoid smoking. Nobody will ever know.

I have used this project in pretty much every class. I can see it being done as a 6^th grade enrichment project. I have used it in the first week of Pre-Calculus to assess skills and encourage a take action approach to mathematics. Chances are EVERY student you have, knows someone who smokes. Who knows what affect this project may have on them.

What about weed?

I set up the project to up for a student to calculate data for two states. When I do it, every student does our state, Ohio. This way, when I model difficult problems, we can all work on a problem that is assigned. In many cases, students will do the same problem type twice, increasing repetition and practice. It will also allow students to do a side-by-side comparison. Why are tobacco prices in Virginia so much cheaper than in Massachusetts? This leads to some impromptu discussion.

Every year a student stands to ask about data from other countries. I’d be happy to do it, but it’s difficult to pin down these numbers. That and the prices around the world are also typically much LOWER than in the United States. It’s just something I’ve avoided. I don’t want students to think they should go buy cigarettes from Mexico instead of not smoking at all! 21st Century Math Project Mind Control! A student will also likely ask about marijuana. Sometimes I bring up Starbucks and other daily wasteful purchases. No offense Starbuckers.

How might our class leverage this
information to help the global community?

While it certainly is optional, I have always had interesting PSAs for this project. I have the students choose a specific target audience. Either an age group, ethnic group, etc. And it needs to be relevant to the state that they have chosen. It’s a great opportunity for students to use mathematics to take action. Often I have used this project as a before Winter Break thing so students could create their PSAs over break.

EXTENSION: The wonderful thing about asking your students to create PSAs is that in many cases this is web-based and (depending on your school district, image rights, etc) you may be able to share these PSA with the community. Nonetheless perhaps there will be some bold students to speak out against tobacco!

Mathematical Rigor, Real World Relevancy, and 21st Century Swagg. The three keys to math project success!