Students use ratios, unit rates, proportions, percent, and rational number operations to design a fair, welcoming community space that responds to real constraints and community needs. Working with site maps, measurement data, and feedback from local planners, engineers, or architects, teams compare layout options, estimate materials and costs, and revise their scaled park model and expo display. The experience builds critical thinking, collaboration, and communication as students test ideas, participate in a sticky-note gallery walk, revise their plans, and explain in a before-and-after comparison how math improved the final design.

Students will compute unit rates from community space data and use proportional relationships, fractions, percents, and rational number operations to scale layouts, compare options, and solve multistep problems about costs, materials, distance, and area. Students will collaborate with peers and community partners to design and revise a scaled neighborhood space plan that is fair, useful, and welcoming for different users. Students will give and use specific feedback during a gallery walk, explain before-and-after revisions with evidence from their math, and present their final model or display to visitors. Students will reflect on how their mathematical decisions and teamwork improved the quality of their community proposal and set a goal for stronger participation next time.

Students create draft and revised scaled sketches or small models of a neighborhood park or welcome space, with labeled ratios, unit rates, rational number calculations, material estimates, and cost comparisons. Throughout the lesson, teams produce sticky-note feedback records, a before-and-after revision comparison, and one highlighted example of math work that shows how proportional reasoning improved fairness, safety, or usability. By the end, they present an expo display featuring original and revised plans, feedback highlights, and a final claim about how math improved the space. Teams can also share a short audio reflection that explains how partner or community feedback changed their design decisions.

Open with a “Needs and Numbers Walk” using photos, simple site maps, measurement data, and scenario cards for a neighborhood park, plaza, or bus stop area, and invite a parks planner, city engineer, or architect to introduce one real challenge in making a shared space fair, safe, and welcoming. In teams, students rotate through stations to compare scaled layouts, compute quick unit rates for materials or space per person, and make rapid choices about cost, distance, and access using fractions, decimals, and percents. Then run a 10-minute “Design Dash” where teams build a rough layout with model pieces, post a one-minute claim about how their math supports the design, and receive one warm and one cool sticky-note response from peers. Close with a brief share-out connecting the launch to the driving question of how ratios, rates, and rational number reasoning can improve a community space for everyone.

Host a “Build the Block Expo” or “Welcome Space Open House” where teams present scaled park models, revised sketches, unit-rate labels, cost charts, and sticky-note feedback highlights to families, peers, and local partners such as parks staff, engineers, or architects. Students rotate visitors through design stations, explain their before-and-after revisions, and make a clear claim about how ratios, proportions, fractions, and rational number calculations improved fairness, safety, and usability in the space. Include a short audio reflection station and an exit chart wall where visitors can respond to students’ math-based decisions and community impact. This format celebrates collaboration, communication, and critique while giving students an authentic audience for their final community proposal.