Today’s warm up was from Would You Rather.

Student first took “gut check” guesses and they were split evenly on the two choices. I asked if they noticed anything else about the images and they said the weights were given. In pairs they were to work on their whiteboards and show their thinking with some mathematical evidence to help make a more informed decision. Most groups divided 1.5 oz right away by two to get 0.75 oz each. Also, most groups needed a little help with dividing the 7 oz by 8 people instead of 7. We stopped and had a chance to review the rules of rounding and when we should round to 1, 2, 3, or more decimal places.

Since Purchasing Power is a strand from the curriculum document I wanted to continue with making buying decisions. We followed the Is Lego Gender Biased lesson. It’s a fun lesson that asks students to choose the best deal but throws a little twist in.

Calculating the price per piece was a great way for us to practice unit rates with purpose and it gave us great talking points again with rounding.

After the shocking conclusion that “girl marketed” Lego cost more per piece than “boy marketed” Lego the students worked on this problem with ease:

Tomorrow we’ll look at ways to get paid and schedules: Weekly, monthly, annually, etc. I’ll throw in a few best buy practice questions too.

Follow the course day-to-day as it unfolds.