Mixed Numbers Recipe Doubling

About this resource

What's inside this resource

Butter Tart Recipe (based on my grandma's actual delicious family recipe!)

Here is a real-life example to help students practice adding and multiplying mixed numbers and improper fractions. When students ask, "When will we ever use this in real-life?!" you can show them this lesson and say that working with fractions is so common in baking.

This delicious activity will allow students to practice using fractions with a realistic everyday example: baking!

Students will take a recipe that has several fractions in it and double it. Half a cup of something becomes a cup and 3/4 of a cup becomes 1 and a half cups. After that, they need to figure out how much of each ingredient would be needed if the recipe was made five times bigger (perhaps in a bakery setting or for a large event). I encourage my students to use different strategies to complete this task: drawing pictures with squares, repeated addition, or multiplication. Boxes for diagrams and math calculations are included to encourage students to show their work. You could even have different students come up to show their personal strategies to the rest of the class.

As an extension, students can bring in their own recipes from home in the next class and double them or multiply them by five as well. You might even want to actually make something tasty to eat too!

What's Included:

A total of 5 pages in PDF:

Title Page

2 page assignment

2 page answer key

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What's included

A teacher page introducing the recipe activity, the doubling and five-times tasks, and the three suggested strategies: drawing pictures with squares, repeated addition, or multiplication
A student page headed "Butter Tart Recipe (Makes enough filling for one dozen tarts)" listing 3/4 cup butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 egg, 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla and 7/8 cup raisins, with the prompt "What if you wanted to make two dozen tarts?"
A workspace area and a Mixed Number / Improper Fraction table with rows for Butter, Brown Sugar, Egg, Vanilla and Raisins on each student page
A second student page repeating the task at five dozen tarts, followed by "Which ingredient was the easiest to multiply and why?", "Which ingredient was the most challenging to work with?" and an extension: "Find a recipe at home or on the internet and double it!"
A worked page for the doubled recipe giving 1 1/2 cups / 6/4 = 3/2 for butter, 1 cup / 2/2 = 1 for brown sugar, 3 tsp / 6/2 = 3 for vanilla and 1 6/8 cups / 14/8 = 7/4 for raisins, with a note on how students might draw the doubling of 3/4
A worked page for the five-dozen recipe giving 3 3/4 cups / 15/4 for butter, 2 1/2 cups / 5/2 for brown sugar, 7 1/2 tsp / 15/2 for vanilla and 4 3/8 cups / 35/8 for raisins, plus sample responses to both reflection questions

Resource types: Worksheets & Printables, Word Problems, Activities

In the classroom

Teaching tips & learning objectives

Learning objectives

Double fractional and mixed-number quantities — 3/4, 1/2, 7/8 and 1 1/2 — and record each doubled amount
Multiply those same quantities by five, producing results such as 15/4, 35/8 and 15/2
Write each scaled amount in both forms, converting between mixed numbers and improper fractions in either direction
Show a chosen strategy in the workspace box, whether a drawn square diagram, repeated addition or multiplication
Explain in writing which ingredient was easiest to scale and which was most challenging, and give a reason

Teaching tips

Page 1 is written to the teacher and pages 2 and 3 are the student sheets, so the doubling task can be run on its own before the five-dozen page is handed out
The Egg row carries no fraction — the worked page writes N/A in the Improper Fraction column — which makes it a natural first row for students who need an entry point before tackling the 7/8 cup of raisins
The teacher page suggests inviting students to the board to present their own approach, and the worked pages model two of the three named strategies: a square diagram for doubling 3/4 and the calculation 3/4 x 5 = 15/4
Raisins at 7/8 cup generate 14/8 and 35/8, so settle with the class beforehand whether a result may stay as 1 6/8 cups or must be reduced to 1 3/4
The closing extension — find a recipe at home or online and double it — works as a next-lesson task, since students need a day to bring a recipe in

Skills covered

Doubling fractions and mixed numbers — students take 3/4, 1/2, 1 1/2 and 7/8 straight from the recipe and enter each doubled amount in the table.
Multiplying a fraction by a whole number — the five-dozen page requires 3/4 x 5 = 15/4, 7/8 x 5 = 35/8 and 1 1/2 x 5 = 15/2.
Converting between mixed numbers and improper fractions — every ingredient row is completed twice, once in each column, for both the doubled and the five-times recipe.
Choosing and showing a strategy — the workspace box invites a drawn square diagram, repeated addition or multiplication, and the activity asks students to make that choice visible.
Explaining mathematical difficulty in writing — students name the easiest and the hardest ingredient to scale and justify it, as the worked page models with "The eggs because they are a whole number".

Good to know

Questions teachers ask about this resource

How are the raisin quantities written once they are scaled?

Doubled, 7/8 cup is given as 1 6/8 cups beside 14/8 = 7/4; at five dozen it becomes 4 3/8 cups beside 35/8. The mixed-number column is left unsimplified while the improper-fraction column is reduced, so it is worth deciding with a class which convention you want before marking.

Which strategies are students meant to use in the workspace boxes?

Three are named on the teacher page: drawing pictures with squares, repeated addition, and multiplication. The worked pages model two of them — a square diagram for doubling 3/4 and the calculation 3/4 x 5 = 15/4 — and the teacher page suggests having students present their own approach to the class.

Is the recipe written in imperial or metric measures?

Imperial — cups and teaspoons throughout. The one-dozen quantities are 3/4 cup butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 egg, 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla and 7/8 cup raisins, and the yield is counted in dozens of tarts.

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Curriculum

Standards, concepts & topics

Standards

4.NF.B.4 — Apply and extend previous understandings of multiplication to multiply a fraction by a whole number. a. Understand a fraction a/b as a multiple of 1/b. For example, use a visual fraction model to represent 5/4 as the product 5 × (1/4), recording the conclusion by the equation 5/4 = 5 × (1/4). b. Understand a multiple of a/b as a multiple of 1/b, and use this understanding to multiply a fraction by a whole number. For example, use a visual fraction model to express 3 × (2/5) as 6 × (1/5), recognizing this product as 6/5. (In general, n × (a/b) = (n × a)/b.) c. Solve word problems involving multiplication of a fraction by a whole number, e.g., by using visual fraction models and equations to represent the problem. For example, if each person at a party will eat 3/8 of a pound of roast beef, and there will be 5 people at the party, how many pounds of roast beef will be needed? Between what two whole numbers does your answer lie?