Homemade lemonade lesson

Educator story

Simon Angley
Alberton Primary School
Alberton Cluster

This story is based on a lesson where students were asked to make homemade lemonade from a recipe.

First, the lemons were cut in half. Ruby commented, “You haven’t cut the lemon in half”. This provided an opportunity for an incidental class discussion on halves and fractions and how ‘half’ in everyday life was often an approximation and didn’t always have to be exact.

Students then squeezed one lemon and recorded the amount juice collected. Then, based on the amount of juice extracted from one lemon, students predicted how many lemons they thought they would need to obtain 250mls of juice. Estimations were recorded and reasons for variations were discussed. Students then continued to measure out the rest of the ingredients as per the instructions.

Kevin and Dillon’s evaluation of this lesson really sticks in my mind. “This lesson is awesome! It’s so much better than doing worksheets!”

These hands-on activities that engage students are providing fantastic opportunities for teaching numeracy skills.

Whilst many of the Science activities that I have done with my class have been highly engaging, few were as well received as the lemonade activity. A challenge for me is to continue to increase my repertoire of science activities that my students find as engaging as this one. Another reflection on my year of being involved in the Make it Count program is to plan to incorporate more numeracy/maths into my activities as I feel that at times I have missed doing this.

This inpiring story connects to:

Finding 3.12 : Passion
Stimulate a passion for mathematics in teachers by finding intersections with other fields of knowledge (e.g. the Arts).