This task allows students to practice the skill of adding and subtracting mixed numbers, in an engaging real life context - designing a city street for a sponge city!

Students are given a City Block Map, a long strip of paper representing a 15-meter wide street section. They must choose from a menu of features and select 4 features to install in their own city street. They will calculate the total width used by adding the mixed numbers, before subtracting from the 15m street width to find out how much space is left for human space (e.g. sidewalks/cafes). If the human space left is less than 2 1/4 m, the plan is rejected for being too cramped!

This activity also comes with an additional challenge to provoke higher order reasoning and develop mathematical thinking.

This download provides both the Editable PPT Version and the PDF Version.