In this problem students apply basic proportional reasoning in the context of a pie recipe. Given a recipe for 80 pies, Peter needs to determine whether the ingredients he has on hand are enough to make 2 pies. The Teachers' Notes page offers rationale, suggestions for implementation, discussion questions, ideas for extension, and printable lists of ingredients (doc).

This tasks gives a verbal description for computing the perimeter of a rectangle and asks the students to find an expression for this perimeter. Students then have to use the expression to evaluate the perimeter for specific values of the two variables.

This task is a natural follow up for task Rectangle Perimeter 1. After thinking about and using one specific expression for the perimeter of a rectangle, students now extend their thinking to equivalent expressions for the same quantity.

The purpose of this task is to ask students to write expressions and to consider what it means for two expressions to be equivalent.

This task is written so that students have opportunities to use different strategies to determine whether a set has an even or odd number of objects.

The purpose of this task is for students to compare two fractions that arise in a context. Because the fractions are equal, students need to be able to explain how they know that.

This word problem may be used for instructional or assessment purposes, depending on where students are in their understanding of addition and how the teacher supports them.

There are a couple of ways to solve this real world word problem.

This open-ended investigation provides an opportunity for students to develop problem solving skills and explore patterns while applying number skills. Posed in the context of friends sending each other cards, it asks students to find how many cards are sent based on the number of friends, and to look for patterns that emerge in the results. The Teachers' Resources page offers rationale, suggestions for implementation, discussion questions, and ideas for extension and support. Be sure to check out the Solutions page to appreciate the potential range of student thinking.

Students gain experience and practice with three types of word problems using the "Take From" context: result unknown, change unknown, and start unknown.

This word problem is based estimating the height of a person over time. Note that there is a significant amount of rounding in the final answer. This is because people almost never report their heights more precisely than the closest half-inch. If we assume that the heights reported in the task stem are rounded to the nearest half-inch, then we should report the heights given in the solution at the same level of precision.

The purpose of this task is to present students with a context that can naturally be represented with an inequality and to explore the relationship between the context and the mathematical representation of that context; thus, this is an intended as an instructional task.

This task uses language, "half of the stamps," that students in Grade 5 will come to associate with multiplication by the fraction 12. In Grade 3, many students will understand half of 120 to mean the number obtained by dividing 120 by 2. For students who are unfamiliar with this language the task provides a preparation for the later understanding that a fraction of a quantity is that fraction times the quantity.

This problem can be solved in more than one way. The choice in solution method may reflect the comfort and mathematical sophistication of the student.

This is a multi-step problem since it requires more than two steps no matter how it is solved. The problem is not scaffolded for the student, but each step is straightforward and should follow from the previous with a careful reading of the problem.

The purpose of this task is to address the concept of opportunity cost through a real world context involving money.

This real world word problem about calculating a tip in a restaurant requires multiple steps.

This series of word problems requires students to determine which problems can be solved by multiplying 1/8_2/5.