Milk's Favorite Cookie in the Third Grade

For the sixth year in a row, Mrs. Maria Stetin’s third grade students participated in the cross-curricular, collaborative O.R.E.O. Project - “Our Really Exciting Online” Project.  The project involves math and computer skills, and making connections with students all over the world.  It also, of course, involves Oreo cookies. 

First, our students predicted how many cookies they would be able to stack without them toppling over.  Next, they separated into groups of four or five students, and did their best to stack as many Oreos as possible.  They were required to follow the rules of the project which stated that cookies must be stacked one at time, the stacking attempt is over if even one cookie falls, students could not use anything to stabilize the tower, and there were a maximum of two attempts per group of students.  After the two attempts, the students recorded their highest stack and then calculated the class average.  Their results:

The average number of cookies stacked: 19.5

The greatest number of cookies stacked: 25

The class then reported their results to the O.R.E.O. Project results webpage, and compared their results to the other participating students’.  Over 562 classrooms and 12,800 students participated in the project whose average stack was 18 - 1.5 less than our students’ average!

Finally, the third graders used the cookies to make Oreo sculptures.  The project culminated in a cookie tasting party.  The students were proud to show off their cookie stacking, math, and computer skills and were very excited to have beaten the average!