We are coming to the end of our project ‘Is accuracy really that important?’ and the students have spent a lot of time preparing their events (surprisingly all football events). Over the last week they have used ‘credit cards’ to purchase stock, stadiums, players, refs and everything needed to stage their events. With one group blowing its budget by over $300,000, some have learnt they need to generate a lot of income, and quickly, and so began selling tickets. Each day saw them purchasing more items, and each day saw a shop having a special, such as 1/2 price or 1/4 off the marked price. Who said fractions and decimals were boring?
Yesterday I observed as the three groups worked together, listening to the conversations taking place. Every student was fully engaged and the enriching conversations about mathematical concepts were fantastic. They didn’t realise that while they went from store to store to find the best price, adding those prices up, they were actually learning decimals and fractions. Everyone had to bring their purchases and totals to me, the checkout, and I would check their work. This is where the question ‘Is accuracy that important?’ played a huge role. Some students might have just put a decimal in the wrong place and could have ended up being charged $50,000 instead of $5,000. All can now agree that accuracy, whether big or small, is really important.
We now wait to see if all can make a profit by the end of the week…
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