College Fund from Great Aunt Betty

SCORE Mathematics

Standards Connections

College Fund from Great Aunt Betty

Introduction: Your Great Aunt Betty died at the ripe old age of 100 years. She was a very smart and thrifty lady; as well as being very generous. Great Aunt Betty left you $1,000 to go towards your college fund. Now, you will be investing your new found money into a CD. Your parents encourage you to reinvest the college fund into the CD, until you are ready to start college. Your job will be to calculate the growth of your CD for seven years.

Prior Knowledge: The learners must be introduced to calculating interest.(Working with percents). They should be familiar with building tables with information.

Grade Level: 4-7

Task: The learner will become comfortable calculating percentages and learn about certificates of deposit.

Resources:

Top FDIC-Insured Bank Rates
Paper and pencil will be needed to build a table of earned interest.

Process:

The learners must access the Web and the URL that was given, and select a CD in which to invest.
The learners must calculate the amount of money earned from the interest (paid annually) in the term of the CD for the $1000 invested.
The learners must then calculate the interest earned for seven years.
The learners must show the findings on a table for seven years, and show the total earnings including the $1000

Learning Advice: The learners must be able to calculate percentages, and know how to organize a table of information.

Evaluation: The learners will be evaluated individually, by the answers to their calculations found on their tables.

Extensions:
The learners could show the earnings on a bar graph.

Calculate the difference if compound interest is paid monthly as opposed to annually.

Conclusion: The learners will be able to calculate interest and build a table of information.

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California Mathematics Academic Standard:

Grade 4:
Statistics, Data Analysis and Probability
1.0 Students organize, represent, and interpret numerical and categorical data and clearly communicate their findings.
1.1 formulate survey questions; systematically collect and represent data on a number line; and coordinate graphs, tables and charts

Grade 5:
Statistics, Data Analysis and Probability
1.0 Students display, analyze, compare, and interpret different data sets, including data sets of different sizes.

1.3 use fractions and percentages to compare data sets of different size

Grade 6:
Statistics, Data Analysis and Probability
3.0 Students determine theoretical and experimental probabilities and use these to make predictions about events.

3.1 represent all possible outcomes for compound events in an organized way (e.g., tables, grids, tree diagrams) and express the theoretical probability of each outcome
3.3 represent probabilities as ratios, proportions, and decimals between 0 and 1, and percents between 0 and 100 and verify that the probabilities computed are reasonable; know that if P is the probability of an event, 1-P is the probability of an event not occurring

Grade 7:
Number Sense
1.0 Students know the properties of, and compute with, rational numbers expressed in a variety of forms.

1.7 solve problems that involve discounts, markups, commissions, and profit and compute simple and compound interest

NCTM 5-8:

STANDARD 1: MATHEMATICS AS PROBLEM SOLVING
STANDARD 2: MATHEMATICS AS COMMUNICATION
STANDARD 3: MATHEMATICS AS REASONING
STANDARD 4: MATHEMATICAL CONNECTIONS
STANDARD 5: NUMBER AND NUMBER RELATIONSHIPS
STANDARD 6: NUMBER SYSTEMS AND NUMBER THEORY
STANDARD 7: COMPUTATION AND ESTIMATION
STANDARD 8: PATTERNS AND FUNCTIONS
STANDARD 9: ALGEBRA
STANDARD 10: STATISTICS