This resource has students making sense of data tracking the history of the cost of bread in the US and the history of the Federal minimum wage. There options of sense-making activities for teachers to choose from. This set of activities is a great opportunity for teachers to integrate math and social studies.

All the materials for this problem are available in this Google folder. Read on for recommendations for teaching this problem.

This lesson now includes translated graphs, slides, and handouts translated to Spanish (see link above). Thank you to Jose Adorno and Connie Rivera from Connecticut adult education.

Before the Problem (choose one or two of these activities:

Graph from class data

In preparation for the main problem, we recommend asking a survey question to collect some data from the group in a quick graph. It is a way for participants to make connections between their own experience and the context of the problem. For the bread and federal minimum wage chart, we ask participants – How much did you get paid per hour at your first job?

• Write on the board or project: How much did you earn per hour at your first job?
  1) Please add a data point to the histogram chart on the wall.
  2) Introduce yourself to a neighbor and talk about your first jobs.
• As participants come in, ask them to add their data to the chart on the wall. Then ask them to please speak with a neighbor about that first job while you’re waiting for the session to begin.
• When all dots have been added, the chart might look something like the photo below.

Predictions based on title

Tell the class: I am going to show you a data set titled “The Cost of Bread & The Federal Minimum Wage.”

What do you expect the data will show? (Collect ideas.)

Numberless graph

Share this handout or the numberless slide from this slide deck.

Note: You might also present this graph as a slow reveal.

Stand & Talk

Use this handout. More info on the Stand and Talk routine.

The Problem

Based on the info in this chart, when might people earning minimum wage have struggled the most? 

At this point, we would recommend that students have some time to work independently, then to work in small groups to prepare a poster where they can explain their reasoning and show why they think their answer is correct.

After the Problem

Sentence Starters

These sentence starters can be useful for discussion or writing afterwards. Students choose a sentence starter they like and talk about the graph using it. This can move into a writing activity as well.

Reading on The Price of Bread and Purchasing Power

This reading will give students background on the history of using the price of bread to estimate how well people are doing economically. It extends the ideas from the graph and prepares students for the practice test question next.

HSE Practice Test question

We recommend that students have spent some time with the graph and the reading before attempting this test question.

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These activities were inspired by THE PRICE OF BREAD, which is a task from Illustrative Math (reviewed on CollectEdNY here). It rolls out a problem over a series of three charts. The first looks at the price of bread in every decade from 1930-2010 and asks students to figure out the percent increase for each decade. The second looks at the federal minimum wage for those same years and asks students to calculate the percent increase – this time in the raising of the minimum wage. The third has both sets of data, has students calculate what percentage of an hour’s work (at minimum wage) was a pound of bread for each decade. Students are told, “Consumers are not affected by inflation when the amount of money they make increases proportionately with the increase in prices.” The final task is for students to explain “In which decade were people who earn minimum wage most affected by inflation?”