Road Trip Across the States: Rational Operations
In this engaging math activity, students take a virtual 3-day road trip where they must manage a $200 travel budget while solving multi-step real-world problems. Each day involves calculating mileage-based gas costs, adjusting for food purchases and returns, applying discounts, and summing expenses using decimal and percent operations.
Aligned to 7.EE.B.3, this worksheet challenges students to apply rational number operations in context, analyze totals, and reason about spending choices. It supports financial literacy, problem-solving, and precision in decimal calculations—all wrapped in a relatable and fun storyline.
Skills practiced:
- Multi-step decimal operations
- Calculating unit rates (e.g., cost per mile)
- Applying percent discounts
- Budget tracking and reasoning
Perfect for 7th-grade classrooms focused on real-life math applications!
Learning Objective
Students will solve multi-step real-world problems involving rational numbers, including decimals and percentages. They will calculate unit rates, apply discounts, track expenses, and evaluate totals to stay within a fixed budget. Through this activity, students will develop fluency in using operations with rational numbers in context and improve their ability to reason strategically about financial decision-making.
Randomization Available
If randomization is enabled, each student will receive different values for miles driven, gas prices, meal costs, and discount percentages. This ensures that every student solves a unique version of the trip while practicing the same math skills. As a result, correct answers will vary across students.
đź’ˇ Tip: When assigning this activity to your classroom, you can optionally enable randomization to give each student a unique version of the problems. When you re-assign the same worksheet, each student will get a new set of questions, helping them master the content through repeated practice.
