Day 170 Working World Wednesday

6th Grade Math Standards: 6.RP.3c Find a percent of a quantity as a rate per 100 (e.g., 30% of a quantity means 30/100 times the quantity); solve problems involving finding the whole, given a part and the percent.

The Learning Objective: Use proportions in a real-world contextIdentify parts of a paycheck; budget money in a real-world scenario

The Assessment: Much of the information given in this class is new to students. My main concern is that they use proportions to find how much of a check is devoted to items such as social security, gross pay, etc. The secondary concern is that the students come away with a sense of how difficult it is to save money. This is much harder to measure in terms of exit tickets or projecting it onto a worksheet, but I heard students make comments such as "I don't want to be an adult," and this was good enough given the amount of new information stuffed into one lesson.

Agenda:

1. Pick a profession
2. Fill in the blanks as to the definition of social security, net pay, gross pay, federal withholding, state withholding, and medicare (part 1 of this worksheet)
3. Calculate the percentage of your check that gets taken away as a result of social security, medicare, and taxes (part 2 of this worksheet)
4. With the remaining money, get a car and pay off bills such as utilities, mortgage/rent ($1000 for all just for simplicity), cable, etc. (this worksheet)
5. Calculate the percentage of money left to "play" with

Glass Half-Full Take: I like seeing the reactions from students as they realize that their "hard earned" money is simply thrown away before they get to buy their video games, fancy sneakers, and expensive trips to theme parks. I like that many of them choose an expensive car and that we can have a discussion about material possessions.

One Regret: When filling in the blanks, it was unclear to students that the terms were a word bank. I suppose this needs to be communicated better. It was quite frustrating in one class as the students refused to even try and guess, and only said in an exasperated tone "how are we supposed to know this stuff?"

I also think a conversation of what percent of your check do you think you get to spend after paying for bills prior to starting the lesson could be helpful in motivating and adding to the learning throughout the lesson.

Link of the Day: Up to 40% of America's food gets thrown away. The article discusses that we should buy in less bulk and actually go shopping more. Great for unit rate discussions.