consumer math
-
Estimating Prices of Common Items
Google Slides for helping students estimate prices The Google Slides (link at bottom of page) has an editable text box to allow educators and parents to enter items for estimation (below, top). Several items can be included in a single Google Slides (below, bottom). If a student has an unreasonable response, a follow up activity…
-
Running Bank Balance Activity
The use of cash as a payment method is declining. This has implications for how we teach money, consumer math, and life skills math. This is especially true for students with special needs who need more concrete representations of math. This post presents an activity to practice with a running bank balance. Cash vs Card…
-
Weekly Food Budget Activity
Budgeting is a challenging topic for many students with special needs. The process has many components, multiple steps, and involves application of money and shopping math topics. This post describes an activity to develop competence in budgeting by shopping for a food for a week with a money limit. Google Document The activity is presented…
-
Online Personalized Consumer Math Board Game
The game is played on a Jamboard. There are moveable game pieces on the left (Lego figures chosen to mirror the players – no hair is me), along with movable bills. There is a white rectangle partially covering the cashier’s money. It is a moveable rectangle I use to reveal the money when the cashier…
-
Online Personalized Consumer Math Board Game
The game is played on a Jamboard. There are moveable game pieces on the left (Lego figures chosen to mirror the players – no hair is me), along with movable bills. There is a white rectangle partially covering the cashier’s money. It is a moveable rectangle I use to reveal the money when the cashier…
-
Unit Cost and Actual Shopping
I previously shared that grocery shopping has a lot of tasks that are overlooked. One is working with unit costs. There are two math tasks related to unit cost, interpreting what a unit cost is and computing the total cost for buying multiple items. When I take a student into a grocery store to work…
-
Unit Cost and Actual Shopping
I previously shared that grocery shopping has a lot of tasks that are overlooked. One is working with unit costs. There are two math tasks related to unit cost, interpreting what a unit cost is and computing the total cost for buying multiple items. When I take a student into a grocery store to work…
-
“They Will Never Need This Math”
As a parent of a child with a disability and as a math educator, I am repeatedly struck by the fact that a group of adults (educators and professionals) convene to discuss and plan how to help a child. A great deal of time, resources, and money is concentrated on that child. Awesome! Unfortunately, in…
-
Shopping is Dense with Math Tasks
I recently worked with a student on an online grocery shopping activity – finding ingredients for mac and cheese. We had the ingredients listed in a column on a Google Doc (allows both of us to edit the doc simultaneously) and then he cropped and pasted a photo of each ingredient (see photo below). The…
-
Real Life Math VS “Mathy” Math
In working with students, parents and IEP teams, I find that there is an assumption that math at some point, possibly beyond arithmetic, is simply a science fiction movie that is minimally related to real life. I hear from students as well as adults, statements like, “algebra, when are we ever going to use it?”…