IRVINE : Students Apply Math Skills to Shopping
OK, you have a $95 budget and you need to buy four bath towels, a dress, a pair of pants, a shirt and shoes.
Easy enough?
Now figure that you have only an hour to shop and must come as close as you can to your budget without going over, of course taking into consideration discount percentages and sales tax.
For 30 sixth-graders from Los Naranjos Elementary School in Irvine, the task was an exercise in mathematics made easy as they cavorted through a closed Mervyn’s Department Store in Irvine on Tuesday morning searching for those items.
“It’s a real-life situation,” math teacher Judy Hawley said. “They’ve been practicing a month for this, so they were really motivated to do well. This exercise involves every aspect of addition and subtraction, as well as multiplication, division and fractions.”
Real-life situations, indeed, as most students--rather than picking out items that merely fit the bill--opted for chic attire even though they weren’t actually buying anything.
“Fashion equals popularity,” said Ricky Kovach, 12, scanning through a rack of colorful baggy shorts.
The students, assigned to groups of four, were given calculators and an “expense sheet” that listed group and individual items they needed to “buy.” On the back of the sheet were discount percentages for the items. The three groups that came closest to their overall budget were given prizes such as hats and T-shirts from Mervyn’s.
For John Udink, who finished fourth overall (coming in 36 cents under budget), studying decimals and fractions for a month has already helped in practical situations at home.
“I went shopping with my mom at Ralph’s a while ago and she didn’t know that I brought a calculator. When she was finished shopping, I added up the discounts and tax and it came to exactly what the checkout person had. My mom was so surprised, she asked them to check the figure again,” said 12-year-old John.
“She never takes a calculator along, so now she wants me to go shopping with her all the time.”
Hawley said that after looking over the students’ computations, most were right, while a few others were just pennies off. The top male finisher was Daniel Lawson, who came in 12 cents under budget. The top female finisher was Cailin Long, who came in 27 cents under budget.
“I have $40 left to buy a pair of shoes,” said Cailin during the exercise. She had just snatched up a pair of pants and was briskly on her way to the shoe section.
Student-teacher Jennifer Paulson said that a month ago, the students would have difficulty performing all the calculations needed to get an accurate figure, but now it has become easy for them.
“I’ve worked with them over the month in classroom exercises similar to what we’re doing today. They pick up on these types of lesson real quick,” she said.
Five sales clerks at Mervyn’s spent the early morning helping the students with final tabulations and directions around the dimly lit store, opened early and exclusively for the students.
“Most of the regular customers that come in here to buy things ask us all the time how much something is going to cost if it is discounted. These students already seem to have a good understanding of how it works,” said Alma Santoyo, a sales clerk who organized the field trip.
