Teaching percent of discount from our book can be BORING! The text book gives us all the information and students regurgitate the steps to solve.
In our class, we had a small discussion about the two different ways to find the percent discount. Students can either subtract at the beginning or subtract at the end. After some direct instruction of about 5 minutes, students reflected on the process through a blog post.
After that, students were introduce to the great resource of Amazon.com. This is a useful site in that they give you "the original price" lined out and the "discounted price" in red. We viewed two different items and had students find the discount in percent.
After students had two problems with their partners to work on, it was their time to shop.
We did not complete the process, as students still need to take a picture of their item and reflect on the process in their blog. Tomorrow, we will finish!
Next time you have mathematical problems, consider making it as real to students as you can. Helping less and making the students think is a great tool that the iPad can facilitate!
