Shopping Spree – Discounts, Deals & Decisions
TechWorld Challenge – Discounts, Markups & Smart Spending immerses students in a practical, real-world shopping scenario where they must make smart financial decisions using math.
Students act as savvy shoppers using a $150 gift card to purchase one item from each of three tech categories: headsets, smartwatches, and Bluetooth speakers. Each item comes with a deal—either a discount, markup, or no change. Students must calculate adjusted prices, apply sales tax, and justify their choices while staying under budget.
🧠 Skills Reinforced:
- Multi-step percent calculations (discounts, markups, tax)
- Budgeting within constraints
- Justifying choices based on numerical reasoning
- Real-world consumer math decision-making
🛠️ Worksheet Includes:
- Tables with original prices and deals
- Calculations of final prices after discount/markup and tax
- A decision task to select 3 items within budget
🎯 Great For:
- Reinforcing percent applications
- Independent or small group practice
- Applied learning and financial literacy tie-ins
Learning Objective
Students will apply their understanding of percent discounts, markups, and sales tax to solve a real-world budgeting problem. They will calculate adjusted prices, apply multi-step percent operations, and make purchasing decisions within a fixed budget, reinforcing proportional reasoning and financial literacy.
Randomization Available
To support individualized learning and reduce copying, this worksheet is randomized. Each student receives different original prices, discount or markup percentages, and tax-inclusive totals. This ensures that while the structure remains the same, each student works with unique data—encouraging independent thinking and problem-solving.
💡 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.
