Math

Cars
Have students turn to the car advertisements and find the prices. They can indicate which numbers are in the ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands column. Have them determine the difference between the most and least expensive cars.

Shopping Spree
Send the students on a shopping trip in the newspaper. They can find items that cost less than ten dollars. Which items cost more than one hundred dollars? Which cost more than one thousand dollars? They can compare the price of two similar televisions, automobiles or computers in ratios and discuss why they have different prices. Have them create three word problems using the information they found in the newspaper.

Show Me the Money
Students can look in the classified ads and find three jobs, with salaries listed, that they might like when they grow up. They should figure out how much they would make in a year, a month, a week, a day and an hour.

Fractions to Decimals
Students can skim the advertisements for banks or mortgage companies looking for interest rates that include fractional parts. These can also be found in the ads for cars. Students can convert the fractions to decimals.

Winners and Losers
Have the students work in pairs and use the professional sports standings to determine the win/lose percentages of their favorite teams. One student can give his/her partner the number of victories and defeats for the teams while covering the percentages listed in the paper. They can both check the answers against the newspaper. They can round off the numbers to the nearest tenth and hundredth.

Cost of Living
The students can use the classified ads to furnish a new apartment. Have them estimate the total cost they think they will have to spend. The students can list all the necessities and find prices for them in the paper. Then they can list the luxuries and their costs. What conclusions can the students draw from this activity? Did they need more or less money than they thought?

Apples to Oranges
Have the students compare the price of five pairs of similar items. They can create a chart to illustrate the differences in price. Have them express each pair in a ratio.

Annual Spending
Teens spend lots of money on personal care products. Have your students use the ads in the newspaper to find the cost of some of the products they use. Have them list all of the products or types of products they buy. Using the information in the ads, see if they can estimate the amount they spend on these products in a year.

Perimeter
Here is some geometry practice for your students. Have them find unusual geometric shapes pictured in the newspaper and then write the formula to find the area and perimeter of each one.