General Information
Benchmark Instructional Guide
Connecting Benchmarks/Horizontal Alignment
Terms from the K-12 Glossary
Vertical Alignment
Previous Benchmarks
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Purpose and Instructional Strategies
In middle grades, students engaged in real-world problems involving money calculations. In Math for Data and Financial Literacy, students develop budgets with various income points, inflation and cash management strategies.- Instruction includes the use of spreadsheets to develop the budget to complete the computations.
- Instruction includes budget terms to support student understanding such as income, savings, net income and expenses, including variable and fixed liabilities.
- Budgets developed for individuals can vary greatly depending on expenses at different stages of life. They can be developed by month as well as yearlong depending on the need of the individual. Instruction includes a monthly budget that can transition to a yearly budget to show costs that are semi-annual or one-time costs such as an insurance payment.
- A business budget is developed to track income and expenses to have a plan for spending, determining profit and growth. The budget will help the business with long range planning and predictions for the company. Business budgets have similar components to personal budgets such as revenue, fixed costs, variable costs, one-time expenses, cash flow and profit.
Common Misconceptions or Errors
- Students may need more information of what is included in a budget such as utility bills, cell phone and internet use, consumable items such as groceries, and larger items such as rent and car payments.
- Students can display budgets in multiple ways by using graphs such as a line graph or circle graph and may need instruction on what the graphs represent.
- Students may need instruction on understanding terms of bills within the budget, for example, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or bimonthly payments.
Instructional Tasks
Instructional Task 1 (MTR.7.1)- Create a spreadsheet for an annual personal budget to include income, weekly and monthly expenses and other expenses. Consider the frequency of the expenses and items that you may have based on your living plans for the future.
- Part A. Using a $2,500 bi-weekly income, determine total income first as you set up the spread sheet.
- Part B. Include some weekly expenses such as food, eating out and entertainment.
- Part C. Include monthly expenses such as mortgage or rent, utilities, car loans, insurance and savings.
- Part D. Include any other expenses that could potentially be in your budget like additional insurance, vacation, repair savings for car or home, and medical.
Instructional Items
Instructional Item 1- ACE Painting Company is working on their monthly budget. They have 12 employees that paint for them and are hired as contractors each month depending on how many homes they paint per month. In their budget, will this be variable or fixed expense?
*The strategies, tasks and items included in the B1G-M are examples and should not be considered comprehensive.