Worksheet Grade 10 Art & Music

Sedgwick Find-the-Leak Poster: Grade 10 Scale and Budget Worksheet

A grade 10 design worksheet where students plan a fictional utility's leak-awareness poster, choosing colors and solving scale, area, and print-budget problems.

Grade: Grade 10
Subject: Art & Music
Material: Worksheet
Time: 40 min
Prep: No prep
Materials: None

Standards

HSN-Q.A.1 Common Core Math

Use units as a way to understand problems and to guide the solution of multi-step problems; choose and interpret units consistently in formulas; choose and interpret the scale and the origin in graphs and data displays.

How this material aligns: Items 4 through 7 carry inches and square inches through the scale-factor, area, and quantity calculations, choosing and interpreting units consistently as students size the campaign's printed posters.

All materials for HSN-Q.A.1 →

HSA-CED.A.1 Common Core Math

Create equations and inequalities in one variable and use them to solve problems. Include equations arising from linear and quadratic functions, and simple rational and exponential functions.

How this material aligns: Items 8 and 9 have students create a cost equation and a budget inequality in one variable and solve them to find the greatest number of posters printable within the fixed budget.

All materials for HSA-CED.A.1 →

Download Word file

This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-07-23.

Objectives

Students will choose color relationships that make a poster message legible and persuasive.
Students will calculate the scale factor and area change between a mock-up and a printed poster.
Students will write and solve an equation and an inequality for printing costs within a budget.

Vocabulary

Key words: complementary colors, value contrast, scale factor, budget constraint

Teacher overview

The Sedgwick Water Utility (a fictional utility) is running a "Find the Leak" poster campaign to remind households that leaks waste water and money. Household leaks waste nearly 9,400 gallons a year on average, and the campaign wants that idea to land in a few seconds. This worksheet asks students to plan the poster as a designer would: choose colors that carry the message, scale a mock-up up to print size, and keep the print run inside a fixed budget.

Sedgwick Find-the-Leak Poster: Grade 10 Scale and Budget Worksheet — Grade 10 Art & Music

Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

The fictional Sedgwick Water Utility has asked you to plan its "Find the Leak" poster. Household leaks waste nearly 9,400 gallons of water a year on average. Use that fact and the numbers in each item.

The slogan sits on a colored background. Name the color relationship you would use to make the slogan stand out, and explain in one sentence why it works.
Define "value contrast." Explain why a poster needs strong value contrast even for a viewer who cannot tell red from green.
The poster states that household leaks waste nearly 9,400 gallons a year. Rewrite that number as one vivid comparison a viewer could picture.
Your mock-up is 5 inches by 7 inches. The printed poster is 20 inches by 28 inches. What is the scale factor from the mock-up to the poster?
By what factor does the poster's area grow compared with the mock-up's area?
Find the area, in square inches, of the printed 20-inch by 28-inch poster.
The utility will print posters for 24 bus shelters and 36 library boards. How many posters is that in total?
Each printed poster costs $6. Write an equation for the total cost C of printing p posters, then find the cost of all the posters from item 7.
The print budget is $500. Write an inequality for the number of posters p the utility can print at $6 each, and find the greatest whole number of posters that fits the budget.
A team wants to double the poster's height and width for a downtown banner. Explain why the printing cost of one banner will be more than double the cost of one poster, using the idea of area.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key

Answer: Answers may vary; complementary colors are a strong choice. Placing the slogan's color opposite the background color on the color wheel makes each look more intense, so the slogan separates cleanly from the background. Warm-versus-cool or strong light-dark contrast is also acceptable with a reason.
Answer: Value contrast is the difference in lightness and darkness between elements. A poster needs it because a viewer who cannot distinguish red from green still sees light against dark, so the message stays legible without relying on hue.
Answer: Answers will vary. A strong comparison makes 9,400 gallons concrete, such as "enough to fill about 200 bathtubs" or "a full bathtub of wasted water every two days."
Answer: 4. Both 20 divided by 5 and 28 divided by 7 equal 4, so the linear scale factor is 4.
Answer: 16. Area grows by the square of the linear scale factor, and 4 squared is 16.
Answer: 560 square inches. The printed poster is 20 by 28, and 20 times 28 equals 560 square inches.
Answer: 60 posters. 24 bus shelters plus 36 library boards equals 60 posters.
Answer: $360. The equation is C equals 6p; with p equal to 60, C equals 6 times 60, or $360.
Answer: 83 posters. The inequality is 6p less than or equal to 500, so p is at most 83.3, and the greatest whole number of posters is 83.
Answer: Printing cost tracks area, not height alone. Doubling both height and width makes the area four times as large, so a banner uses about four times the material and costs well over double one poster.

Differentiation

Support

Provide a color wheel and a worked example of a scale-factor calculation using different numbers before item 4. Give the equation form C equals 6p already set up for item 8 so students focus on substitution and solving.

Extension

Ask students to design a second, larger banner size, choose its dimensions, and calculate both its area factor relative to the original poster and the print cost at the fictional utility's same $6 per poster-area rate, then justify whether the banner fits a raised $700 budget.

ELL supports

Provide a bilingual glossary card for "complementary," "value," "scale factor," and "budget," each with a small image. Allow items 1 through 3 to be answered with labeled sketches and short phrases, and provide sentence frames such as "I would use ___ colors because ___."