Mastering Mental Math: Estimating and Calculating Costs

Mastering Mental Math: Estimating and Calculating Costs

Learning Objective

At the end of the lesson, you will be able to estimate and calculate the cost of transactions involving multiple items priced in whole-dollar amounts using mental math.

Introduce the learning objective and the key concepts that will be covered in this lesson.

What do you already know about estimating and calculating costs using mental math?

What is Mental Math?

Mental math is the ability to perform calculations in your head without the use of a calculator or pen and paper.

Explain the concept of mental math and how it can be useful in everyday life.

Estimating Costs

Estimating costs involves rounding prices to the nearest whole number and adding them up in your head.

Demonstrate how to estimate costs using mental math and provide examples.

Calculating Costs

Calculating costs involves adding up the exact prices of items in your head.

Demonstrate how to calculate costs using mental math and provide examples.

Multiple Items and Whole-Dollar Amounts

When dealing with multiple items priced in whole-dollar amounts, simply add the prices together to get the total cost.

Explain how to calculate the total cost when dealing with multiple items priced in whole-dollar amounts.

Practice Makes Perfect

Practice estimating and calculating costs using mental math with the provided exercises.

Give students time to practice estimating and calculating costs using mental math with provided exercises.

Real-World Applications

Estimating and calculating costs using mental math can be useful in real-world scenarios such as shopping or budgeting.

Provide examples of how mental math can be useful in everyday life.

Wrap-Up

In this lesson, you learned how to estimate and calculate the cost of transactions involving multiple items priced in whole-dollar amounts using mental math.

Summarize the key concepts covered in the lesson and encourage students to practice their mental math skills.

Write down 3 things you learned in this lesson.

Have students enter three things they learned in this lesson. With this they can indicate their own learning efficiency of this lesson.

Write down 2 things you want to know more about.

Here, students enter two things they would like to know more about. This not only increases involvement, but also gives them more ownership.

Ask 1 question about something you haven't quite understood yet.

The students indicate here (in question form) with which part of the material they still have difficulty. For the teacher, this not only provides insight into the extent to which the students understand/master the material, but also a good starting point for the next lesson.