Lesson Title: Tamales

Grade Level: 7th

Childrens Literature Book: Los Tamales de Ana por Gwendolyn Zepeda
Six-year old Ana looks forward to growing older and being allowed more responsibility in
making tamales for the familys Christmas celebrations.
I chose this book because I felt it was culturally relevant to many of the students in my
classroom. The book also lends itself to work with equations and math problems fairy easily.
Instructional Objectives / Learning Goal:
SWBAT create equations including variables to solve problems created from the stories context.
SWBAT chart and graph the data derived from the story.
SWBAT solve multi-step problems.
SWBAT analyze given story problems to decide which information is relevant to the question
being asked.
Arizona College and Career Ready Math Standards
7 E.E.B.4 Use variables to represent quantities in a real-world or mathematical problem, and
construct simple equations and inequalities to solve problems by reasoning about the
quantities.
a. Solve word problems leading to equations of the form px + q = r and p(x + q) = r, where p,
q, and are specific rational numbers. Solve equations of these forms fluently
Designing a Task (or Problem Solving Activity) Based on Childrens Literature Book
TASK(S) and WHY:
Task:
Ana does start her own company, Anas Tamales. She has five employees. One prepares the
meat and dough to assemble the tamales. Three of them help make the tamales; one spreads
the dough, the other fills and rolls the tamales, and the other steams them. The last employee
is the driver who is in charge of collecting the ingredients needed to make the tamales and
delivering them once they are made.
On average Anas company produce 360 tamales every two hours. How many tamales would
they make in 5 hours? How many tamales do they make every 10 minutes?
Make a chart and a graph of the amount of tamales that Anas company can make in 1hr, 2hrs,
3hrs, 5hrs, etc. to show an 8 hour work day.
Write an equation that will calculate the number of tamales made by Ana and Lydia in X hours.
Why:
The number chosen for the tamales produced hourly is fairly easy regardless of its high value, I
chose it because I want the students to understand that you can work with large numbers but
still have simple computations. I did want to challenge them somewhat after they found the
hourly rate which is why I chose a half hour and 10 minutes for my questions, these numbers
may seem unfriendly but are actually fairly easy to solve.
The context is from the book which I am assuming most of my students are familiar with.
Making tamales or at least eating them is a very common practice for Hispanic cultures and
people who live in Tucson but are not Hispanic are also usually exposed to this practice.

I am purposely giving my students unnecessary information in my problem for two reasons.

One, is so that they can become familiar and use to this format which is often found in
standardized tests. Two, I want my students to be able to analyze a text and recognize what
information is relevant to the question being posed.
ANTICIPATED STUDENT RESPONSES: Thinking about the Students Thinking
Students might divide 360 by 3 (3 workers) and get 120 and then divide by 2 (hours) which
will give them 60 tamales and hour.
Dividing by the number of workers is not necessary for this problem but because the
information is given students might be inclined to use it.
Students will divide hourly rate by 10 to get minute rate. (ex. If they conclude 60 tamales/hr
they will get 6 tamales/minute)
Students are comfortable and used to working with base ten and will often forget or
misunderstand how to properly break down an hour which is not comprised of 100 minutes.
When charting data students might invert variables. (ex. Independent variable will be tamales
produced instead of hours)
Have seen it done in prior activities.
When graphing students might invert their coordinate axis.
Have seen it done with prior activities.
Some students might struggle with the multiple steps required to solve problem.
Some students will be able to chart and graph data without a problem.

EXTENSIONS UP AND DOWN

Extension Down:
How many in four hours? How many in 15 minutes?
OR
120 tamales are produced in 2 hours.
Extension Up:
How many hours would Anas employees have to work if they need to produce 1800 tamales?
If they can steam 5 dozen tamales at a time how many batches of tamales will they have to
steam if they make tamales for 6 hours.
If Anas employees are only allowed to work eight hours a day, how many days of work would
it take them to produce 5000 tamales?
Make your own problem that would involve the information given in the first paragraph.
Vocabulary and Language Objectives
State:

The key mathematical vocabulary used in the lesson, including vocabulary in both
Spanish and English, if appropriate. State each vocabulary word or phrase, and provide
a student friendly definition.
Rate - a ratio that compares two quantities having different units of measure.
Equation - a statement that the values of two mathematical expressions are equal (indicated
with a =)
Graph - a diagram showing the relation between two variables
Data - facts and statistics
Average - calculated "central" value of a set of numbers
Tarifa - una proporcin que compara dos cantidades que tienen diferentes unidades de medida.
Ecuacin - una declaracin de que los valores de dos expresiones matemticas son iguales
Grfico - un diagrama que muestra la relacin entre dos variables
Datos hechos y estadsticas
Promedio - el valor "central" calculado de un conjunto de nmeros
Materials & Tools
Consider:
How do the tools I use in the lesson act as learning supports?
Do the tools make the topic easier for the students to understand?
Do I offer a variety of tools for students to use?
Description of the Mathematics Tools you will have available for students:
Pencil
Worksheet made for Los Tamales de Ana
Graph paper
Notebook paper

3 PART LESSON PLAN for a Literature-Based Lesson

1) BEFORE: Introducing and Reading the Book
Students in first period are to read silently the first 10 minutes of class, I will let them know
that today I will be reading to them in lieu of.
Introduce book by asking:
Who has eaten tamales before?
Who is familiar with making tamales?
What the process of making them?
Introduce book and state that this book is all about making tamales.
Read the book
I will read the book in Spanish. It is a bilingual book so if I notice students do not understand I
will switch to English.
I also plan on skipping the narrative portions that dont involve making tamales to condense
reading time.

Pose the task

Task will be on smart board as well as given to each student. It will be read to students once
and then discussed to check for understanding. Students will be asked to state the problem in
their own words, give strategies they might use to solve, and give predictions of answers.
Can someone tell me what we are being asked to figure out?
Does everyone know what average means?
Does everyone understand what it means to chart and graph the information?
Can someone share how they are going to approach the problem?
Does anyone have an estimation of what our answers could be?
Directions given to start:
Alright you can now begin working on the task; you can work independently or with a partner.
If you have any questions you need to ask three peers before asking an instructor.
2) DURING: EXPLORE the TASK
Students thinking I will be listening to see if students mention rates and if they state the
rate in the proper format (tamales per hour). Students might set up proportional fractions to
find the rate.
Support If you know how many tamales were made in two hours, how could you figure out
how many are made in one hour?
How many minutes are in an hour?
Now that you know the rate how can you write an equation?
What is your scale going to be for your y-axis? Why?
What does Y represent? X?
How does your graph reflect your equation?
Can you explain to me how you got your answer?
How did you know to do that?
Can you share with your partner the way you did it?

3) AFTER: Summarizing / Final Discussion

Students will be selected by a raise of hand. I will try and alternate between genders and areas
of the room.
Now that weve all had time to work on the task, I want someone to come up and share their
work for the first problem.
Do you guys agree with their answer? (if not, I will ask those students to share their answer
and then ask them to defend it).
This will be repeated with the remaining problems.
Is student does not use the vocabulary term rate, I will use it when restating what they
said to check for understanding.
Did anyone get the same answer but do it a different way? Can you show us?
What steps were required to get to our answer?
Did everyone create an equation?
Was there information in the task that we didnt use? Why do you think it was given? Could we
use it to make our own problems?
(students name) was able to do so, can you please share with us what your problem was and if
you solved it, how you did so?
Can someone summarize what our first problem was?
How did we go about solving it?
So as a recap, we figured out the hourly rate of tamale production, we made an equation to

reflect that rate, and then we put that data in a table and plotted it on a graph.