The mathematical purpose of this lesson is to practice identifying and representing important information in a situation. The work of this lesson connects to previous work done in grade 6 when students learned to create algebraic expressions from verbal descriptions. In the associated Algebra 1 lesson, students create equations to model the relationships between quantities, and to represent constraints in various situations. This lesson prepares students to begin the work in the Algebra 1 lesson by allowing them to practice identifying important quantities in situations (MP4) and representing them with expressions. This will help build their ability to interpret word problems before they are tasked with representing them with an equation. Discussing their reasoning when deciding what information is needed and finding connections between representations allow students to construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others (MP3).