At the beginning of the school year, Superintendent Edwards sent the 4th grade students an email requesting their input for next year's school budget. The result was a math inquiry project in which they created a school budget from start to finish.
Students brainstormed items they wanted to purchase, researched prices, estimated quantities based on the school's enrollment, and then multiplied the prices by the quantity to find costs. Finally they used addition to find their grand total and subtraction to make sure they stayed within the allotted budget. The students ended the project by creating a Google Slides presentation on their budgets, as well as recording a message to Mr. Edwards on Flipgrid. Mr. Edwards loved watching the students report on their projects through Flipgrid and asked to come in with Ms. Lori Prinz to speak with the students about the actual budget process.
They had an end of project celebration with cookies, chocolate milk, and candy canes. The students presented to Mr. Edwards and Ms. Prinz about the project and then Mr. Edwards presented with Ms. Prinz to the students. The goal of this project was to get the students to practice adding, subtracting, and multiplying multi-digit whole numbers in a real world context.