Who doesn’t like mixing food with learning? Today we investigated how many M&M’s we thought were in one bag using a scale to weigh in grams. As a whole class, we inquired into how the scale works, playing with it’s functions. Next, I drew popsicle sticks to determine groups of four students to work together to reach a conclusion of how many candies there were. The group got to pick either a crispy bag of m&m’s or a regular bag of m&ms to experiment with. The rules were simple: use any strategy you want to figure out how many m&m’s are in the bag. Yes, you can open the bag and use the m&m’s but no, you cannot count the m&m’s one by one, you must somehow use the scale.
Hint: Look at the back to figure out what the total weight of the package is.
Working in small groups to organize our thinking 
Weighing the M&M’s in small amounts
The results for this lesson were varied. Many students got frustrated since when they weighed only one m&m the scale weighed 0kg but when they weighed two m&m’s it sometimes weighed 2kg. Regardless, the students had fun, used teamwork, developed skills on how to use a scale, and were creative in their approaches to get reasonable results whether or not they were totally accurate.
Sonia Richmond 