The principal needs help planning the school lunch schedule! Students will plan a lunch schedule to accommodate all of the students in the school. However, there can only be 100 students in the cafeteria at a time and only 20 students can sit at a table. Students will figure out how to arrange the lunch schedule so that every class eats together and so that certain grade levels are not together at the same time.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought processes. MEAs follow a problem-based, student-centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEAs visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx