We found yet another great idea from the blog Teaching in Room 6. Ms. Moorman calls it “real estate math” and uses it as a great tool to get her students using and thinking about large numbers. She uses home magazines to have her students go shopping, they are given a budget and they must purchase three houses, pay for those houses with a checkbook and then balance that checkbook.
I immediately thought about all of the roles that students could play in this lesson. If certain learners could not complete the entire sequence of steps, they could be given jobs as house hunters, math checkers, or estimation experts. To make it more challenging, you could add in a mini-lesson on financing. This lesson also has many important consumer math elements; this could be the first taste students have of staying within a budget, for instance.
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