Students apply ratios, percentages, and budgeting skills in this fast-paced, team-based math competition. As co-founders of a vehicle startup, they calculate production costs, analyze sales offers, and race through 10 business cycles—boosting engagement through real-world math, strategy, and collaboration.
🚗Car Manufacturing: A Paired Learning Math Competition Lab
Overview
This is an interactive, fast-paced, and highly engaging paired learning simulation where students run a virtual electric vehicle manufacturing startup. Over the course of this competition, students will apply real-world math to make strategic decisions, collaborate with a partner, and race against the clock to generate the most revenue through 10 production cycles.
This lab transforms your classroom into a dynamic startup environment where math is applied under pressure, teamwork is essential, and decision-making drives success.
Engaging Storyline
Students are hired as the founding team of a new electric vehicle startup—Industry Inc.
They are given a $100,000 investment to kickstart production. Their goal is to build and sell as many vehicles as possible across 10 production cycles.
Each cycle, students:
Meanwhile, a real-time leaderboard tracks the total revenue of each team—creating energy, urgency, and a powerful classroom-wide competitive dynamic.
Collaborative Format: Paired Learning
Students work in teams of two.
Each student is responsible for three of the six components, encouraging division of labor, shared accountability, and peer verification. Collaboration is built into every activity—from budgeting to choosing sales agents to reflecting on teamwork at the end.
Execution Plan & Timing
This lab is designed to be run over two classroom periods (45–50 minutes each):
📅 Day 1: Introduction & Team Setup (One Class Period)
Present the challenge storyline and walk students through the context.
Let students run the Introduction Section, where they:
📅 Day 2: Competition Day (One Class Period)
⏳ Final 10 Minutes
By the end of this lab, students will:
📈 Why Teachers Love This Lab
📦 What’s Included
Turn your classroom into a startup. Let math drive the business.
Industry Inc. is where strategy, teamwork, and numbers collide.
Ready to launch your student entrepreneurs? 🚀
Apply and extend previous understandings of addition and subtraction to add and subtract rational numbers; represent addition and subtraction on a horizontal or vertical number line diagram.
All 7.NS.A.1 activities →Apply and extend previous understandings of multiplication and division and of fractions to multiply and divide rational numbers.
All 7.NS.A.2 activities →Recognize and represent proportional relationships between quantities.
All 7.RP.A.2 activities →Use proportional relationships to solve multistep ratio and percent problems. Examples: simple interest, tax, markups and markdowns, gratuities and commissions, fees, percent increase and decrease, percent error.
All 7.RP.A.3 activities →Mathematically proficient students start by explaining to themselves the meaning of a problem and looking for entry points to its solution. They analyze givens, constraints, relationships, and goals. They make conjectures about the form and meaning of the solution and plan a solution pathway rather than simply jumping into a solution attempt. They consider analogous problems, and try special cases and simpler forms of the original problem in order to gain insight into its solution. They monitor and evaluate their progress and change course if necessary. Older students might, depending on the context of the problem, transform algebraic expressions or change the viewing window on their graphing calculator to get the information they need. Mathematically proficient students can explain correspondences between equations, verbal descriptions, tables, and graphs or draw diagrams of important features and relationships, graph data, and search for regularity or trends. Younger students might rely on using concrete objects or pictures to help conceptualize and solve a problem. Mathematically proficient students check their answers to problems using a different method, and they continually ask themselves, "Does this make sense?" They can understand the approaches of others to solving complex problems and identify correspondences between different approaches.
All CCSS.Math.Practice.MP1 activities →Mathematically proficient students make sense of quantities and their relationships in problem situations. They bring two complementary abilities to bear on problems involving quantitative relationships: the ability to *decontextualize*—to abstract a given situation and represent it symbolically and manipulate the representing symbols as if they have a life of their own, without necessarily attending to their referents—and the ability to *contextualize*, to pause as needed during the manipulation process in order to probe into the referents for the symbols involved. Quantitative reasoning entails habits of creating a coherent representation of the problem at hand; considering the units involved; attending to the meaning of quantities, not just how to compute them; and knowing and flexibly using different properties of operations and objects.
All CCSS.Math.Practice.MP2 activities →Mathematically proficient students can apply the mathematics they know to solve problems arising in everyday life, society, and the workplace. In early grades, this might be as simple as writing an addition equation to describe a situation. In middle grades, a student might apply proportional reasoning to plan a school event or analyze a problem in the community. By high school, a student might use geometry to solve a design problem or use a function to describe how one quantity of interest depends on another. Mathematically proficient students who can apply what they know are comfortable making assumptions and approximations to simplify a complicated situation, realizing that these may need revision later. They are able to identify important quantities in a practical situation and map their relationships using such tools as diagrams, two-way tables, graphs, flowcharts and formulas. They can analyze those relationships mathematically to draw conclusions. They routinely interpret their mathematical results in the context of the situation and reflect on whether the results make sense, possibly improving the model if it has not served its purpose.
All CCSS.Math.Practice.MP4 activities →Mathematically proficient students try to communicate precisely to others. They try to use clear definitions in discussion with others and in their own reasoning. They state the meaning of the symbols they choose, including using the equal sign consistently and appropriately. They are careful about specifying units of measure, and labeling axes to clarify the correspondence with quantities in a problem. They calculate accurately and efficiently, express numerical answers with a degree of precision appropriate for the problem context. In the elementary grades, students give carefully formulated explanations to each other. By the time they reach high school they have learned to examine claims and make explicit use of definitions.
All CCSS.Math.Practice.MP6 activities →
More interactive, auto-graded activities on the same standards and topics.
A fast, auto-graded readiness check that covers all ten big ideas of 7th grade in ten questions. Perfect for day one or two of 8th grade. Each question maps to one standard and scores separately, so your class dashboard becomes a heatmap showing exactly which skills are solid and which need review. Not a test, a map. Randomized values. CCSS 7.RP, 7.NS, 7.EE, 7.G, 7.SP.
Students run a smoothie bar for a day, and every decision is a fraction problem with a real purpose. Six connected, auto-graded interactive worksheets covering multiply, divide, equivalent fractions, compare, and order. Carry-forward story keeps math meaningful. Common Core aligned. Run it in a day or across two weeks.
In this real-world math challenge, students use ratio and unit rate skills to plan a 1,250-mile road trip. They analyze past vehicle data, calculate miles per gallon, total costs, and compare options to choose the most cost-effective car.
In this geometry worksheet, students will solve 10 real-world problems, determining whether to calculate the circumference or area for tasks like fencing, painting, or tiling. After deciding, they'll perform the calculations and enter their answers. Each student gets unique dimensions for each problem.
Step into the role of a construction engineer! In this hands-on geometry lab, students estimate costs for concrete, flooring, painting, HVAC, roofing, landscaping, and more using real-world floor plans. Covers area, volume, surface area, and unit conversions. Auto-graded and perfect for 7th grade classrooms.
Theme Park Tycoon is an 8-part Grade 7 ratios and proportions project where students design Aurora Park for an investor. Every worksheet's numbers carry forward, so their choices on rides, pricing, and budget flow into a final ROI they defend. Auto-graded, interactive, and 7.RP-aligned. Real proportional reasoning with real stakes.
