HEADSTART MATHS

FINANCIAL MATHS

Our Headstart Maths unit in Year 8 is Financial Maths, and to help make the theory real for the students in 8-4, Mrs Coleman offered the students an opportunity to run a Christmas stall for the Year 7 transition day. The students were keen for the challenge, and were given a budget of $10 each and a website for Smart Gift Ideas, who help run school fundraisers.

 

The students formed four groups and searched the website for items. They created an order using excel, and learned how to calculate unit prices and use a formula in excel to calculate prices for multiple items. All groups were within the budget and Mrs Coleman ordered the items.

 

The invoice had different prices on it, which were not including GST so the students had to learn how to calculate the price including GST by multiplying by 1.1.

 

The next step was to mark up the prices. This was fun! Mrs Coleman didn’t want to “rip off” the Year 7s so the students learnt how to calculate a percentage increase using a formula and the limit was 120% increase. Luckily no group was trying to rip anyone off. 

 

When our box of goods arrived the students started labelling the items with sale prices, and created posters showing their goods. The students used marketing skills and persuasive language to make interesting posters to attract customers.

 

On the day each group set up their stall. The Year 7s didn’t buy as much as we thought they would so we opened the stall again for the rest of the school a couple of days later.

 

Overall we made a modest profit of just under $40, which was a profit margin of 20%. Most importantly, the students applied their maths skills to some real life learning and found out that running a business at a profit can be a challenge. 

Christmas stall 

The Christmas stall wasn’t too bad, but I didn’t like the part where we had to talk to the year 6’s so I made Tilly talk to them the whole time. We ended up making $27.50 the total we spent was $29.80 so it was an 8% loss. It was a good experience though. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.  

The math’s we worked on was on excel adding money to get a total cost price for our Christmas so we could sell the stuff.  

By Shayla Rose  

 

Year 8 head start, for math my class did Christmas stalls. The Christmas stall was not that bad at all, but the worst thing was when Shayla made me do all the talking. We ended up making $27.50 the total we spent was $29.80 so it was an 8% loss. But I had a good experience talking to new people, it was not as bad as I thought. 

The math we worked on was on excel, adding money to get the total cost price. 

Tilly Cutler