Cooking provides wonderful opportunities to help students learn mathematical vocabulary. 5.1 students learnt phrases like ‘more than’ or ‘less than’ than by weighing out ingredients to cook pan cakes. They started the lesson with the measurements. First the teacher showed the students how to measure one cup of flour and put it into a bowl. Next they were instructed to measure 1 cup of flour but this time, using ½ cup measurements and ¼ cup measurements. They talked about the difference in the measuring cups as the teacher kept on asking open ended questions such as: How are they different? How do you know that four ¼ cups equals 1 cup? to encourage critical thinking.
Students were also asked to double the pan cake recipe. Students were prompted to think about making two recipes by counting and measuring the ingredients twice. Such prompts helped them think about doubling.
