LAFS.5.W.2.4Archived Standard

Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)
General Information
Subject Area: English Language Arts
Grade: 5
Strand: Writing Standards
Idea: Level 3: Strategic Thinking & Complex Reasoning
Date Adopted or Revised: 12/10
Date of Last Rating: 02/14
Status: State Board Approved - Archived

Related Courses

This benchmark is part of these courses.
5010010: English for Speakers of Other Languages-Elementary (Specifically in versions: 2014 - 2015, 2015 - 2022 (course terminated))
5010030: Functional Basic Skills in Communications-Elementary (Specifically in versions: 2014 - 2015, 2015 - 2022, 2022 and beyond (current))
5021070: Social Studies Grade 5 (Specifically in versions: 2014 - 2015, 2015 - 2022, 2022 - 2023, 2023 and beyond (current))
5010046: Language Arts - Grade Five (Specifically in versions: 2014 - 2015, 2015 - 2022, 2022 and beyond (current))
7710016: Access Language Arts - Grade 5 (Specifically in versions: 2014 - 2015, 2015 - 2018, 2018 - 2022, 2022 and beyond (current))
7721016: Access Social Studies - Grade 5 (Specifically in versions: 2014 - 2015, 2015 - 2018, 2018 - 2023, 2023 and beyond (current))
5010105: Introduction to Debate Grade 5 (Specifically in versions: 2020 - 2022, 2022 and beyond (current))

Related Access Points

Alternate version of this benchmark for students with significant cognitive disabilities.

Related Resources

Vetted resources educators can use to teach the concepts and skills in this benchmark.

Lesson Plans

Calling All Student Leaders:

In this lesson, students will observe a speaker and analyze a piece of informational text (an excerpt from Bill Clinton's 1993 Inaugural Address) to further develop their knowledge of summarizing, identifying central ideas and relevant details, and identifying claims and supporting reasons with evidence. Students will then play the role of the speaker and create their own writing on a topic they think would be important to kids, why they would be a good candidate for president, or how they might motivate other kids. At the lesson's end, students will present their speech to the class. A graphic organizer, student handouts, and rubrics are provided for the writing and speaking activities.

Type: Lesson Plan

SPS2064 Inc. Energy of the Future:

This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) is written at a 5th grade level. SPS2064 Inc. MEA provides students with an engineering problem in which they must work as a team to design a procedure to select the best company that will send and build solar energy equipment in space.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Mars Exploration Administration:

Students will be given the opportunity to design a conductivity tester for astronauts to use on Mars. Students will then get to use a 3D printed tester to check common items for potential conductivity and then to redesign their tester.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Blessings in a Bag!!:

In this MEA, the students will help a charitable organization select 5 snack items from a list to provide nutritious snacks for children in low-income communities.  Students will practice using the four operations to solve real-world problems and use decimal notation to make calculations involving money.  Additionally, they will be asked to compare multi-digit numbers to the thousandths.

Type: Lesson Plan

Babysitter's Club Fun with Fractions MEA:

In this MEA, students will apply their knowledge of adding, subtracting, and comparing fractions with like and unlike denominators. Babysitters 'R Us will require students to analyze data in the form of fractional units of time in order to select the best babysitter for the Cryin' Ryan family.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Buy Buy Toy Store is Relocating:

This is a Model Eliciting Activity in which students are asked to assist a toy company in ranking several cities for them to consider where they will open their next store. They also read data and apply multiplication skills.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

To Oregon by Wagon:

Students work in teams to plan the contents of a covered wagon for a family relocating from Missouri to Oregon. Students must calculate the weight and cost of the wagon by adding, subtracting, and multiplying with decimals.

Type: Lesson Plan

Beach on a Budget:

Topic Overview:This 5th grade MEA asks students to work in teams to determine from which store they will buy beach equipment for a new beach rental business, after considering several criteria. After the students have created a proposal based on given data, a twist is added which may vary their results.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Women Warriors:

This is a MEA that looks at the contribution of some women that helped out during the American Revolution.

Type: Lesson Plan

Pendulum Inquiry - Wrecking Balls:

In this lesson, students will mimic a wrecking ball by manipulating the variables of a pendulum in order to move objects with different masses. It is recommended this lesson follow Pendulum Inquiry (see Related CPALMS Resources), which will build students' content knowledge on pendulums. Students can apply their understanding of pendulums gained from the lesson Pendulum Inquiry to assist them in designing wrecking ball pendulums in this lesson.

Type: Lesson Plan

Tall Tales: A Tale of Our Own:

Students will use tall tales to explore figurative language and to summarize important details to identify the theme. Students will create a narrative writing piece of their own using standard conventions and elements of tall tales.

Type: Lesson Plan

The Drama of Superheroes:

This is lesson 3 in a series of 3 lessons where students create trading cards of superhero characters, write comic strips using the superhero characters and expand the narratives from comic strips to create Reader's Theater scripts.

Type: Lesson Plan

Superhero Comic Strips:

This is lesson 2 in a series of 3 lessons where students create comic strips using superhero characters. Students plan their comic strips and analyze the importance of setting, characterization, and conflict to the development of the prompt. Students work together to revise their plans and create comic strips that include multimedia elements.

Type: Lesson Plan

Inventions and Innovations MEA:

Inventive minds have persisted throughout history. Inventors have improved our lives with inventions created out of a desire to solve a problem or make the quality of peoples' lives better. Our president is concerned that we are not keeping up with other countries in the area of engineering and inventive thinking. Why is this? As students explore famous inventions from around the world throughout history, they will decide what the best inventions of all time are and support their opinion with strong reasons.

Type: Lesson Plan

Birds Now:

The Birds Now Pet Store is increasing the size of its bird department. By increasing the number and types of birds, they need to purchase more bird food and the type of food needs to be one that different types of birds can eat. The students need to rank the companies that sell bird food base on the basic requirements out lined in the client's letter.

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

Type: Lesson Plan

Space and President Kennedy: Using Close Reading and Text Dependent Questions:

Students will have an opportunity to read a portion of President Kennedy's speech to Congress about Space Exploration. Using Text Dependent Questions, students will discuss the speech with partners as well as a class and finally write a text based expository essay.

Type: Lesson Plan

Pourquoi Challenge:

During this lesson, students will learn about analyzing literary elements to see how they contribute to the plot and explaining themes of a text through Pourquoi tales. Students will identify these elements and use them to explain the development of themes in Pourquoi tales. Students will use their understanding of these elements to write their own narrative tale.

Type: Lesson Plan

Which Sweets for the Bakery?:

This MEA gives students the opportunity to use real world data to rank proposed product lines from most likely to be profitable to least likely to be profitable. There are two sequential tasks; the second task adds a component of complexity to the original task. Students will apply multiplication and division skills in problem solving, write a procedure with grade-appropriate organization and conventions, and participate in group collaboration to complete this task.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

The Dazzling Painting Co.:

ResourceID: 49826

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Patty's Party Planning:

Students will help a party planner determine which party location is the best one to use for this situation. They will calculate the cost of the banquet hall rental based on the number of people, number of tables and hourly rental of the location by using division and multiplication.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Are You Ready for a Hurricane?:

This activity allows students to determine the types of items that should be in a hurricane survival kit, use a budget and calculations to determine the items to include in the kit and gain an understanding of hurricanes and the need to prepare for them.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Animal Tracks:

Students in this MEA will team up to select an endangered animal to relocate.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

More Bang for your Buck!:

In this open-ended MEA, students will work in teams to determine a procedure for ranking recycling companies. Students will need to calculate their return on recycling, make decisions based on a table of data, and write a letter to the client providing evidence for their decisions.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Fast Food Decision:

Students will rank fast food restaurants from best to worst based on their nutrition, price, and distance to sport field. Students will need to be able to add, subtract, and multiply decimal numbers. Given the first data set, students will come up with a procedure for ranking restaurants based on the prices and nutrition information given. Students will need to consider what is more important, price or nutrition. They will also need to determine what nutritional elements are more important to consider (fat, calories, sodium). Because some ties can occur, students will have to make tradeoffs for nutrition or price. Given the second data set, students have to reconsider their procedure when given price and coupon information along with distance to the restaurant and budget.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Novel Study-Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan:

After reading the novel Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan, students will analyze the perspective of Esperanza while looking at important characterization features and other parts of the plot development. Students will create a narrative writing piece from the perspective of Esperanza based on the characterization features discussed.

Type: Lesson Plan

Math Club T-Shirt MEA:

This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) is written at a 5th grade level. This MEA asks the students to decide on a t shirt that will provide the school’s Math club with the best value for their money. Students are asked to rank order the t shirt company options from best to worst. Students must explain how they arrived at their solution.

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

Type: Lesson Plan

Work that Body- Human Organs MEA:

This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) is written at a 5th grade level. In this open-ended problem, students are presented with a variety of exercise machines, the best health feature of each machine, prices, and popularity (based on a local competitor's gym). Students must rank the exercise machines and describe their procedures for ranking. The durability of each machine feature is later added as a twist so that students can revise or test their original procedures.

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

Type: Lesson Plan

New Frozen Yogurt Store:

This MEA asks students to decide which factors are important in developing a successful frozen yogurt (froyo) store in order to compete with and become the best store in the area. Students will provide feedback to an entrepreneur who is looking to open a frozen yogurt store. They will rank order their choices of the most successful to least successful store. Students will provide a detailed written explanation for how they decided to rank factors and their solution rating existing stores from best to worst.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

New Snack Shack Snack:

This MEA asks the students to decide which snack food would be the best for introduction in the school Snack Shack. Students are asked to compare nutritional value per ounce of food based on calories, fat, sodium, cholesterol, protein, and sugar.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Storage for Storage:

In this MEA, 5th Grade students will work in teams to determine a procedure for ranking Storage Sheds for a construction company that is moving to a new facility to purchase. Students will need to calculate the square feet and cubic feet of space for the Storage Shed, make decisions based on a table of data, and write a letter to the client providing evidence for their decisions.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Vegetables for Our Farm:

This MEA asks the students to analyze data and provide a procedure that can be used by New Wave Farms in order to choose the best vegetable to plant as their first trial with their new soil. The students are to provide the company with a written document showing the order considered to be the best value for their money to the least value, the step by step procedure used to determine the rank order, and an explanation of which category is considered the most important when making the ranking and why.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Amazing Bathing Suits:

In this MEA, students will use problem-solving strategies to determine which bathing suit to recommend to an athletic director.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Rank Our Pressure Cleaners:

This MEA asks the students to decide on a pressure cleaning machine that will provide the Sidewalks and Roof Cleaning Services Incorporated company with the best value for their money. Students are asked to rank order of pressure cleaning machines in term of consumer rating, gallons per minute (GPS), pounds per square inch (PSI), cleaning units (CU), whether it is gasoline or electric operated, price, and amount of time the pressure cleaner takes to clean 10 square feet of surface area. Students must provide a "Best Value" pressure cleaner to the company owner and explain how they arrived at their solution.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Shady Day MEA:

This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) is written at a 5th grade level. The Shady Day MEA provides students with an engineering problem in which they must work as a team to design a procedure to select the best beach umbrella for certain situations.


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

Type: Lesson Plan

What’s New at the Zoo?—an Engineering Design Challenge:

This Engineering Design Challenge is intended to help fifth grade students apply the concepts of plant and animal life cycles and physical characteristics, as well as animal behaviors in a compare and contrast situation. It is not intended as an initial introduction to this benchmark.

Type: Lesson Plan

Experiment or Investigation?:

Students will explain how experiments and other kinds of investigations, such as building a model, observing things in the natural world, or researching a science topic are different.

Type: Lesson Plan

Color Poems—Using the Five Senses to Guide Prewriting:

Once students experiment with poetry, they learn that they have another outlet for communicating their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. In this lesson, students are asked to think about colors, while imagining what they taste, feel, smell, sound, and look like. They explore sample color poems, as well as imagery and symbolism. Students use their five senses as a prewriting tool to guide their poetry writing before drafting, revising, and publishing their color poem. This lesson is open-ended enough that students can write free-form poetry or follow a provided template to create a color poem.

Type: Lesson Plan

Dancing Minds and Shouting Smiles: Teaching Personification Through Poetry:

Experiencing the language of great poets provides a rich learning context for students, giving them access to the best examples of how words can be arranged in unique ways. By studying the works of renowned poets across cultures and histories, students extract knowledge about figurative language and poetic devices from masters of the craft. In this lesson, students learn about personification by reading and discussing poems by Emily Dickinson, William Blake, and Langston Hughes. Then they use the poems as a guide to brainstorm lists of nouns and verbs that they randomly arrange to create personification in their own poems.

Type: Lesson Plan

Solve the Dissolving Problem:

In this lesson, students will be experimenting what independent variable will affect dissolving rates; students will compare results of peers to also determine materials that dissolve and do not dissolve from 5 given materials; and, students will identify and learn what controls in an experiment are and their importance. This is a multi-part lesson that can be broken down by day or presented in one block. Complete all Part As in each phase (Teaching/I Do/Know, Guided/We Do/Understand, Independent/You Do/Do) before Part Bs. This lesson does not address the reference/research component of SC.5.N.1.1.

Type: Lesson Plan

Summarizing and Defending the Theme of Aesop’s Fable "The North Wind and the Sun":

This lesson will engage students in discussions that involve conceptual understanding of vocabulary, theme, and summarizing. After reading a short fable, "The North Wind and the Sun" by Aesop, students will complete activities that require them to think deeply, make inferences based on textual evidence, and defend their interpretation during discussions. Students will use context clues, word relationships, and/or figurative language to determine word meaning and unfamiliar phrasing. Students will participate in a class discussion evaluating conceptual understandings, examining themes, and making inferences. Students will engage in student-to-student discourse and partner work throughout the lesson. For the summative assessment, students will write a summary to convey understandings presented in the text and the discussions with their peers.

Type: Lesson Plan

Sunshine Beach Restaurant:

This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) asks students to develop a procedure to select a hurricane shutter company based on several data points.

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

Type: Lesson Plan

The Water Cycle - Back and Forth:

This lesson features a companion lesson entitled The Water Cycle - Back and Forth (part 2) published on CPALMS. In this first lesson, students create a model (drawing) after learning the parts of the water cycle. The drawing will be in their science notebooks and will be something they will build on in future lessons. At the end of the unit they will display larger finished models. Vocabulary words are defined and connected to a model of melting ice in a water bottle.

Type: Lesson Plan

Vending Machine Snacks:

In this MEA, students are challenged to choose the snacks that will be in a vending machine in a school. Students will need to multiply and divide whole numbers and decimal numbers as well as compare fractions and decimal numbers. Students will work in groups to solve the problem and write a letter to the client explaining their thinking.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Teaching Idea

Stand Up! Speak Out! :

This teaching idea describes a 5th grade project that started with the guiding question, "What makes a good leader?" After conducting a survey of responses to this question, students researched a historical leader, wrote a speech from the perspective of their chosen leader, and created a conceptual portrait representing their chosen leader.

Type: Teaching Idea

Worksheet

Science Fair- Writing an Abstract:

This document provides an detailed description of how to write an abstract for a science fair paper.

Type: Worksheet

STEM Lessons - Model Eliciting Activity

Amazing Bathing Suits:

In this MEA, students will use problem-solving strategies to determine which bathing suit to recommend to an athletic director.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Animal Tracks:

Students in this MEA will team up to select an endangered animal to relocate.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Are You Ready for a Hurricane?:

This activity allows students to determine the types of items that should be in a hurricane survival kit, use a budget and calculations to determine the items to include in the kit and gain an understanding of hurricanes and the need to prepare for them.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Babysitter's Club Fun with Fractions MEA:

In this MEA, students will apply their knowledge of adding, subtracting, and comparing fractions with like and unlike denominators. Babysitters 'R Us will require students to analyze data in the form of fractional units of time in order to select the best babysitter for the Cryin' Ryan family.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Beach on a Budget:

Topic Overview:This 5th grade MEA asks students to work in teams to determine from which store they will buy beach equipment for a new beach rental business, after considering several criteria. After the students have created a proposal based on given data, a twist is added which may vary their results.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Birds Now:

The Birds Now Pet Store is increasing the size of its bird department. By increasing the number and types of birds, they need to purchase more bird food and the type of food needs to be one that different types of birds can eat. The students need to rank the companies that sell bird food base on the basic requirements out lined in the client's letter.

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

Blessings in a Bag!!:

In this MEA, the students will help a charitable organization select 5 snack items from a list to provide nutritious snacks for children in low-income communities.  Students will practice using the four operations to solve real-world problems and use decimal notation to make calculations involving money.  Additionally, they will be asked to compare multi-digit numbers to the thousandths.

Buy Buy Toy Store is Relocating:

This is a Model Eliciting Activity in which students are asked to assist a toy company in ranking several cities for them to consider where they will open their next store. They also read data and apply multiplication skills.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Fast Food Decision:

Students will rank fast food restaurants from best to worst based on their nutrition, price, and distance to sport field. Students will need to be able to add, subtract, and multiply decimal numbers. Given the first data set, students will come up with a procedure for ranking restaurants based on the prices and nutrition information given. Students will need to consider what is more important, price or nutrition. They will also need to determine what nutritional elements are more important to consider (fat, calories, sodium). Because some ties can occur, students will have to make tradeoffs for nutrition or price. Given the second data set, students have to reconsider their procedure when given price and coupon information along with distance to the restaurant and budget.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Inventions and Innovations MEA:

Inventive minds have persisted throughout history. Inventors have improved our lives with inventions created out of a desire to solve a problem or make the quality of peoples' lives better. Our president is concerned that we are not keeping up with other countries in the area of engineering and inventive thinking. Why is this? As students explore famous inventions from around the world throughout history, they will decide what the best inventions of all time are and support their opinion with strong reasons.

Mars Exploration Administration:

Students will be given the opportunity to design a conductivity tester for astronauts to use on Mars. Students will then get to use a 3D printed tester to check common items for potential conductivity and then to redesign their tester.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Math Club T-Shirt MEA:

This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) is written at a 5th grade level. This MEA asks the students to decide on a t shirt that will provide the school’s Math club with the best value for their money. Students are asked to rank order the t shirt company options from best to worst. Students must explain how they arrived at their solution.

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

More Bang for your Buck!:

In this open-ended MEA, students will work in teams to determine a procedure for ranking recycling companies. Students will need to calculate their return on recycling, make decisions based on a table of data, and write a letter to the client providing evidence for their decisions.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

New Frozen Yogurt Store:

This MEA asks students to decide which factors are important in developing a successful frozen yogurt (froyo) store in order to compete with and become the best store in the area. Students will provide feedback to an entrepreneur who is looking to open a frozen yogurt store. They will rank order their choices of the most successful to least successful store. Students will provide a detailed written explanation for how they decided to rank factors and their solution rating existing stores from best to worst.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

New Snack Shack Snack:

This MEA asks the students to decide which snack food would be the best for introduction in the school Snack Shack. Students are asked to compare nutritional value per ounce of food based on calories, fat, sodium, cholesterol, protein, and sugar.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Patty's Party Planning:

Students will help a party planner determine which party location is the best one to use for this situation. They will calculate the cost of the banquet hall rental based on the number of people, number of tables and hourly rental of the location by using division and multiplication.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Rank Our Pressure Cleaners:

This MEA asks the students to decide on a pressure cleaning machine that will provide the Sidewalks and Roof Cleaning Services Incorporated company with the best value for their money. Students are asked to rank order of pressure cleaning machines in term of consumer rating, gallons per minute (GPS), pounds per square inch (PSI), cleaning units (CU), whether it is gasoline or electric operated, price, and amount of time the pressure cleaner takes to clean 10 square feet of surface area. Students must provide a "Best Value" pressure cleaner to the company owner and explain how they arrived at their solution.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Shady Day MEA:

This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) is written at a 5th grade level. The Shady Day MEA provides students with an engineering problem in which they must work as a team to design a procedure to select the best beach umbrella for certain situations.


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

SPS2064 Inc. Energy of the Future:

This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) is written at a 5th grade level. SPS2064 Inc. MEA provides students with an engineering problem in which they must work as a team to design a procedure to select the best company that will send and build solar energy equipment in space.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Storage for Storage:

In this MEA, 5th Grade students will work in teams to determine a procedure for ranking Storage Sheds for a construction company that is moving to a new facility to purchase. Students will need to calculate the square feet and cubic feet of space for the Storage Shed, make decisions based on a table of data, and write a letter to the client providing evidence for their decisions.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Sunshine Beach Restaurant:

This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) asks students to develop a procedure to select a hurricane shutter company based on several data points.

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

The Dazzling Painting Co.:

ResourceID: 49826

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

To Oregon by Wagon:

Students work in teams to plan the contents of a covered wagon for a family relocating from Missouri to Oregon. Students must calculate the weight and cost of the wagon by adding, subtracting, and multiplying with decimals.

Vegetables for Our Farm:

This MEA asks the students to analyze data and provide a procedure that can be used by New Wave Farms in order to choose the best vegetable to plant as their first trial with their new soil. The students are to provide the company with a written document showing the order considered to be the best value for their money to the least value, the step by step procedure used to determine the rank order, and an explanation of which category is considered the most important when making the ranking and why.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Vending Machine Snacks:

In this MEA, students are challenged to choose the snacks that will be in a vending machine in a school. Students will need to multiply and divide whole numbers and decimal numbers as well as compare fractions and decimal numbers. Students will work in groups to solve the problem and write a letter to the client explaining their thinking.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Which Sweets for the Bakery?:

This MEA gives students the opportunity to use real world data to rank proposed product lines from most likely to be profitable to least likely to be profitable. There are two sequential tasks; the second task adds a component of complexity to the original task. Students will apply multiplication and division skills in problem solving, write a procedure with grade-appropriate organization and conventions, and participate in group collaboration to complete this task.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Women Warriors:

This is a MEA that looks at the contribution of some women that helped out during the American Revolution.

Work that Body- Human Organs MEA:

This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) is written at a 5th grade level. In this open-ended problem, students are presented with a variety of exercise machines, the best health feature of each machine, prices, and popularity (based on a local competitor's gym). Students must rank the exercise machines and describe their procedures for ranking. The durability of each machine feature is later added as a twist so that students can revise or test their original procedures.

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

Student Resources

Vetted resources students can use to learn the concepts and skills in this benchmark.

Parent Resources

Vetted resources caregivers can use to help students learn the concepts and skills in this benchmark.