In 4W over the last few weeks we combined the learning of financial maths with our writing topic of advertising to complete a shop project we called PPPPP – Production, Pricing, Promotion, Purchase, Profit.
In the Production stage the students planned, constructed, conducted product testing and did market research in order to produce a paper product that would appeal to potential customers (fellow 4W students). They measured their product and its net and drew up blue-prints as well as producing a set of instructions so that others could replicate their product.
In the Pricing stage they used maths to work out the costs involved in the production of their product (material costs + labour costs). They then tried out different markups (eg, cost x 1.5 or cost x 5) to determine prices for their products. Finally they added 10% GST to their price, which involved learning about percentages for some students, or applying knowledge of fractions, division, placevalue, and addition for others (finding one tenth of the price by dividing by ten – using place-value, then adding that tenth onto the original price).
In the Promotion stage students wrote scripts for radio advertisements, as well as exploring other types of advertising such as posters, web-advertisements, web-pages, tv advertisements, jingles, slogans, logos, catalogues. They formed companies, either as sole traders or in a group, and explored the idea of promoting their company as well as their products. Each company created their own webpage on the 4W Shop website https://sites.google.com/bellps.vic.edu.au/4wshop/home, where they displayed photos of their products, experimenting with both verbal descriptions and visual features of presentation to improve the appeal of their products.
In the Purchase stage students set up their shops in class and sold their products to each other. Using play money, they conducted buying and selling transactions which involved counting, adding and subtracting money to purchase or give change.
In the Profit stage they used maths to count up their shop’s money, subtract the float, pay their GST and work out their profit. They reflected on which items sold well and what might have influenced them – eg, price, quality, demand, presentation. They then used maths to explore a variety of methods to discount their prices and display the savings, from simply choosing a lower price and calculating how much the customer will save, or applying a formula such as half-price or 10% off and calculating the new discounted prices.
Whilst students were able to access mathematical ideas ranging greatly in complexity, they conducted their independent calculations at the level appropriate to their own learning, discovering how the skills they have learnt can be used in a realistic context.
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