Balancing Act

This unit will enable you, the teacher, to use real life issues to teach basic math skills. Using money to help you to teach decimals is a way to bring it home for the students, that math is a necessity no matter what you do in life, because everybody uses money to live.

This unit in intended for 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th or 9th grade students who are struggling with basic math concepts. In this unit you will teach students about math with signs, decimals and fractions by using a checkbook register and real life situations. After two to three weeks of lessons, you can use this as a 10 minute “Do Now” at the beginning of class or a 10 minute “Closer” at the end of class.

Students will learn how to add and subtract negative and positive numbers by learning about and then creating a number line to display around your room for the students to use as a guide all year. They will also learn about calculating percents and decimals and then adding and subtracting them. Fractions could also be another subject that could be addressed.

They will also be able to make decisions about how they spend their money or save it. They will learn about a checking account and how to make it work for them, by avoiding high fees and charges by not making costly mistakes due to inaccurate records.

The last stage will be to teach the students about how to balance a checkbook register to a bank statement each month.