Sadly, my math club has been cut down to 25 minutes this year, and that includes students eating lunch.  So, I need fun, engaging activities that are shorter in nature and are great for both 6th and 7th grade students.

Today I decided to try an interesting problem I saw in my email this morning from Bedtime Math.

I like these problems because not only are the brief, interesting and relevant, they have multiple questions, depending on your level of student.  For us, all of these questions made us think of even more questions!  My students extended the question to ask, “Do you make more money doing this study than working a minimum wage job for the same time period?”

They went right to work and loved it!  We talked about the minimum wage amount ($7.25), and how many work hours were in a typical week.  We also had an interesting decimal discussion when one group of students divided the 10,000 by 70 days but then ROUNDED , coming up with only $994 a week instead of $1,000 per week for the study participants.  After we all decided that you make much more money over 70 days for the study, one student pointed out that you are actually making less per hour since you are really working 24 hours a day in the study.

I have amazing math club students that make every day a joy!  Thank you so much Bedtime Math for your amazing free resource that helps me give them interesting and relevant problems!