Economic Sustainability: Don't Judge a Book by its Cover

As a Math teacher, I am always looking for ways to relate my curriculum to the real world.I currently teach an 8^th grade Math class, where part of the curriculum is to explore areas involving rates of change, unit rates, slopes, and intercepts.There are many real-life examples that can be shown to students to demonstrate these topics.I also teach my students the importance of managing money each year. I am hoping this course will allow me to introduce new ways to show them how to do this, especially when it comes to paying bills and comparing costs of different companies to find the best unit price, (i.e. PECO vs. other electrical companies.)

As stated above, I want to incorporate Common Core topics in a way that will engage, motivate, and excite my students.Discussing rates of change can become more exciting to students if discussing a topic they can relate to, such as buying a new cell phone: If Verizon offers a new Iphone for $200 plus $100 per month for the plan, and Sprint offers the same phone for $400 plus $75 per month for the plan, which company would you choose? Why? Should I always choose Verizon? Sprint? Might there be a time to choose each one?