Lesson Plan: Pizzaria

Pizzeria 3940: Math lesson plan

By Veronique Lavoie & Krista St. Croix

Grade level: 1

Strand: Number sense

Lesson Objectives

Students will:

• further develop counting skills

• discover different ways to make up the number 6

• understand graphing as another means to represent a number

• be able to connect number concepts to the real world

Materials:

Pizza:

• construction paper cut into shape of pizza crust (one for each group of students)

Toppings:

• sections of green pipe cleaner to represent green pepper

• yellow foam cut outs to represent pineapple

• orange pom-poms to represent pepperoni

• purple ribbon to represent onion

• wooden pieces to represent mushrooms

• pink sisal squares to represent ham

* Note: other materials can be used to represent these or other toppings, but they should be different in colour and texture. There should be enough for each group to use 6 toppings.

Procedure:

Introduction:

Ask the class if they like to eat pizza. Have a discussion with them about their favorite pizza toppings. For example say “My favorite pizza topping is pepperoni. What do you like on your pizza?” Record students' answers on board or chart paper. Once this is completed, toppings can be modified to suit students' interest.

Activity:

Tell the class that today we will pretending to open a class pizzeria, and they will be the chefs. Hold up a pizza crust, and tell them that this is their base. Then hold up the different toppings and explain what each item represents. Tell the students that in groups of 4 or 5, they will create as many different pizzas as they can, using only 6 toppings on each pizza. They will record their pizza creations on the handout provided. They can create as many different pizzas as they wish, but they must stay within the 6 topping limit.

Closing:

After the students have been working for about 15 minutes, have a class discussion about the different approaches they have taken and why. Ask each group to share a combination with the class. Discover with them the different ways in which they created a pizza using only 6 toppings. Collect the handouts and materials from each group.

Assessment

Assessment for this activity will be done through teacher observation and anecdotal notes. The teacher will monitor student performance, making note of which students had some difficulty and those that could benefit from additional challenging problem solving activities. Some students may be early finishers and could use larger number combination (8 or 10, for example). A checklist could be used as a form of assessment as well. A sample checklist is below.

Observation	Yes	No
Students are engaged and offer opinions
Students followed direction and stayed within given limitations
Students demonstrate proper use and understanding of manipulative's
Students demonstrate an understanding and correct use of recording sheet

***This lesson plan has been adapted from a lesson described in the text “Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally” by John A. VandeWall. The lesson plan “Earl's sandwich can be found on page 143 in the text.