Students will launch the prom-budget investigation by testing quick spending choices with real event data, building first-draft equations and inequalities, and setting up team questions and norms for the modeling work ahead.

Students will investigate prom cost patterns, turn observations into focused modeling questions, and build an initial plan for using equations and inequalities to test realistic budget constraints.

Students will gather traceable prom cost and fundraising data, organize evidence in shared tables, build and check draft equations and inequalities, and revise their budget model after peer and teacher feedback to ensure each constraint has a reasonable solution.

Students will graph and interpret their prom budget constraints, test feasible and nonfeasible options, compare tradeoffs across multiple model versions, revise their team proposal with evidence, and deliver a short pitch that defends a realistic prom plan with charts, graphs, and clear mathematical reasoning.

Students will present and defend their finalized prom budget proposal to an authentic audience, respond to questions about constraints and tradeoffs, and close the project by documenting how their mathematical reasoning and collaboration improved across revisions.