Shelly and Melissa spent Saturday morning making chocolate chip cookies. They counted the cookies and discovered they had made 53 of them. Then Shelly decided to divide the cookies. Since Shelly was five years older than Melissa, it seemed natural for her to get five more cookies. Draw and label a guess and check table and use it to find out how many cookies were in each sister's pile. Be sure to show all four steps clearly.

To draw a guess and check table to find out how many cookies were in each sister's pile, we need to follow these steps:

Step 1: Label the table
Create a table with two columns: one for the number of cookies in Shelly's pile and one for the number of cookies in Melissa's pile.

Step 2: Make a guess
Start by making an educated guess for the number of cookies in Shelly's pile. Let's say we start with 30 cookies for Shelly.

Step 3: Calculate the number of cookies in Melissa's pile
Since Shelly is five years older than Melissa and has five more cookies, we can subtract 5 from Shelly's pile to find Melissa's pile. In this case, Melissa's pile would be 30 - 5 = 25 cookies.

Step 4: Check if the total matches the given number of cookies
Add the number of cookies in Shelly's and Melissa's piles to check if it matches the given total of 53 cookies. In this case, 30 + 25 = 55, which is greater than 53.

Since our guess resulted in a total number of cookies greater than 53, we need to adjust the amount of cookies in one of the piles. To continue guessing and checking, we can decrease the number of cookies in Shelly's pile and calculate Melissa's pile again.