Cooking with Fractions

Students in Stephanie Pennella's fourth-grade class at Midland applied their math lesson (multiplying fractions) to a real-life situation last week. Ms. Pennella gave her class recipes for waffles and chocolate cake, and brought the ingredients into the classroom. Students multiplied the recipes by two, then started measuring and stirring, with the assistance of their kindergarten buddy class.

"The results were unpredictable when the fractions were wrong,” noted Paul Belanger. “Too much salt in the chocolate cake batter was definitely bad news!" On the other hand, Connor Appleyard tested the waffles and gave a thumbs-up to the batch with extra sugar.