Marvelous Muffins: Planning our Fundraiser

Once our class decided that we'd like to help our African partner classroom by raising money to send them school supplies, we created an action plan for the Marvelous Muffins project.  Students brought forth a number of important questions, which we worked through as a team:

Should we sell muffins individually at the school or take orders for muffins to be picked up by families?  

I explained to my students that our current grade 4 class had a hugely successful cookie sale when they were in grade 1.  We discussed how that class had a goal of symbolically adopting polar bears and they were easily able to raise enough money to meet their goal.  After much discussion, we agreed to move forward with the plan to take orders for muffins, with the possibility of setting up a muffin stand for individual sales at a later date. 



What kinds of muffins should we offer for sale?
Our class brainstormed a big list of different kinds of muffins.  Students decided that we should ask others about their favourite kinds of muffins to determine what would be best to offer for sale.  They were eager to ask others' opinions, so I introduced the concept of a survey.  I  suggested that our class generate survey questions using Survey Monkey, so we created this simple survey together and shared it on from our class Twitter account.  Students suggested we also post the survey link to our blog, so we wrote this post together as a shared writing activity.  

How much should we charge for the muffins?
Students were discussing how much to charge for muffins, so I suggested we call our local bakery to find out what they charge for six muffins.   We placed the call together so everyone could be part of the conversation.  After explaining that it was "Mrs. Obach and her grade 1 class calling", I invited a student to ask the bakery employee our question about their pricing.  We found out the local bakery charges $4 for 6 muffins.  We used this information to develop a survey question about how much people would be willing to pay for our muffins. 

Based on our action plan, we created a to do list to guide our project.  The to-do list changes and grows as the project evolves, but it's an easy way to break down what we need to do for our project to move forward!