In this Model Eliciting Activity, MEA, Chocolate Delight, a chocolate bar company, wants to improve its sales to elementary students by creating a healthy chocolate bar. They have tested 5 new recipes and need to determine which candy bar is best for children. The students will determine a procedure for ranking the recipes from best to worst based on the following criteria: healthiness, taste, and nut allergies and make a recommendation of the healthiest recipe to Chocolate Delight.

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 process. 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 MEA’s visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx