Housing Notes

We started the notes packet for buying a home today. We discussed purchase price, down payment, closing costs, and financing.

This will be our final unit. We will wrap it up next week and then start the review for the final exam.

Final Exam schedule:
2nd period - Wednesday, December 16th at 10:30am
6th period - Friday, December 18th at 10:30am

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Housing Unit - Day 1

Today, we started talking about buying or leasing a place to live. The first activity had students learn some of the terminology used in classifieds. Then, we answered some questions where the answers come from the real estate section of our local classifieds.

Homework: Go to Realtor.com and research some home sales in our area. Bring in information about the sizes, specs, and prices of 5 homes.

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More Review

We've spent all week reviewing for tomorrow's test. Today's focus was on the vocabulary and terminology.

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Utility Review

We started reviewing our Utility Bill concepts today with an overview of utility bill ideas and then some math calculations for the costs and savings based on KWH used, meter readings, and price per KWH used.

Tomorrow, we will continue the review with math calculations for gas and water bills. On Wednesday, we will finish reviewing the concepts by going over vocabulary associated with these 3 utilities. (Remember, Wednesday is an early release/half day.)

There will be a test on Utility Bills on Thursday.

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Utilities - Water

We spent yesterday and today discussing and learning about water utilities: how much water it takes to do normal household activities, the cost of water, and water bills.

Homework: page 238: #10 - 19

Students need to bring in an article & summary tomorrow. The article must deal with one of our utility concepts: electricity, gas, or water.

There will be a quiz next week.

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More Utilities

Last week, students continued working with calculating utilities bills. Calculations with natural gas and therms were done on Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, we did a variety of problems to review calculating gas bills and electricity bills.

Yesterday, we discussed ways that we could use electicity and gas in more effective manners to keep those bills as low as possible (insulation, limiting oven/dryer usage, turning off lights, lowering the temperature on the theromostat, etc ... ). Today's lesson had us calculation the savings found by upgrading appliances as well as the necessary time to use this lower costing item to be able to pay back for the upgrade.

Homework: page 232, #1, 6, 9, 11; page 233, #14, 15; page 234, #20, 21.

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Utilities, day 2

We talked more about electricity and gas bills today. We discussed the Fuel Adjustment charge and tax added to the total kilowatt-hour usage. There is homework tonight on page 226, #1 - 22.

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Utility Bills

We finished up the comparative shopping list activity from Friday with the prices from the sales circulars from Kroger and Publix.

We started talking about utility bills today. We will discuss meter reading, resource usage & cost, billing, and payments.

No homework!

In class today, I mentioned the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery). This test occurs on 12/4 during 1st - 3rd periods. While the test does assess academic knowledge and proficiency in math and verbal areas, it also assesses technical and mechanical proficiency. The results include numeric measures in these areas and related career suggestions as well. The test does not obligate a student to membership in the armed services. Students wishing to sign up for it need to see Mrs. Sabula in the Media Center by 11/20.

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Wrapping up Comparative pricing

Today started with our classes finishing up their presentations from yesterday (from Wednesday's scenario problems). After that, students were paired up. Each student got a sales flyer from either Kroger or Publix as well as a grocery list. Together, with their partners, the students filled in the sales prices for a grocery list to select at which store to shop.

Enjoy the weekend!

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Comparison Shopping Projects

Today, we started some "real world" scenario problems involving comparison shopping. The packet today had 4 problems that the students worked on. Thursday, the students will compare their answers in groups and then present one of the problems to the class. Friday, the class will get sales flyers from Kroger and Publix. They will be given a shopping list to find the prices of the items and the total price of the groceries.

We will use these activities as a project grade in lieu of a quiz or test on this unit.

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More Comparison Shopping

Yesterday, we talked about "Big Box" retailers/outlets that offer bulk packages of items at a decreased rate.
Homework: page 218: #1 - 7

Today, we talked about comparing renting versus buying. We worked through calculations to determine which would be the best monetarily. We also discussed some of the advantages & disadvantages beyond the costs.
Homework: page 221: #17 - 22

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Unit Pricing

As we continued learning about comparative pricing, we practiced today with finding the unit price of items by dividing the total price by how much was bought in the unit.

No homework. Enjoy the weekend!

Sales Tax & Receipts

Yesterday, we assessed the understanding (and, in some cases, the misunderstanding) of sales tax. Today, we extended this lesson to include sales slips with extensions, subtotals, sales tax, and total bill.



Homework: Page 204: #1 - 12

Comparing job benefits

Today's lesson still required us to calculate gross pay, job benefits, and job expenses. This time to compare between two different jobs to determine which is the best job overall.

Homework: page 146 & 146: #15 - 23

We will review net pay on Thursday. On Friday, we will have a test covering the concepts from this unit:

• Net pay
• Tax withholdings
• FICA tax (7.65%)
• Tax brackets
• Job benefits
• Job expences
• Job comparisons

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Fringe Benefits

We discussed various fringe benefits and job expenses. We calculated net job benefits by adding wages and fringe benefits and then subtraction total job expenses.

We will practice with these concepts again tomorrow.

Homework: page 146: #1 - 14 all

We will review all net pay concepts on Thursday and have a test on this unit Friday.

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Using Tax Bracket again & W4 forms

After going over homework, we continued to use tax brackets to calculate federal and state tax withholdings from pay checks. Today's worksheet also reviewed calculating gross pay through weekly, bi-weekly, monthly salary and hourly wages.

We also looked at last year's W4 forms.

Enjoy the 3 day weekend from school!!!

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More tax and net pay calculations

We introduced the concept of tax brackets to class today. However, we simplified the math so that the students only multiply the gross pay times the bracket (not using the amounts into the lower tiered brackets). They calculated state tax and federal tax, and a net pay after those two taxes.

Homework: page 136 - 137: #26 - 37 all

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More Deductions & Tests back

We continued working with calculating FICA tax withholdings and totaling deductions to find a net pay. Right now, we will only calculate FICA, state, and federal tax withholdings. All other deductions will be provided. (Next semester we will calculate these deductions as we look more indepth to what each of those deductions is and how much it costs.)

We also passed last week's tests and went over the answers.

Homework: Page 134 - 135, #1 - 17 all

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Catch up post (Sorry!)

Thursday, we reviewed gross pay and went over the two previous quizzes. No homework.

Friday, we had a test on gross pay. No homework.

Today, we started calculating net pay by figuring income and FICA tax withholdings. No homework.

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Commission, day 3

We finished out the packet on commission today. We will go over our last two quizzes and review tomorrow.

The test on Pay Scales will be Friday.

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Commission, day 2

We continued calculating gross pay based on commission or commission + salary. There is no homework tonight.

We will have a test on FRIDAY. So, we will review in class Thursday.

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Commission

We started calculating gross pay based on a commission pay scale today. Students worked through situations that had basic commission pay, tiered commission pay for higher sales, and commission + salary pay. We will continue working with this concept tomorrow.
We plan to review all of the gross pay scales on Thursday and have a test on Friday.

Homework: Page 156: #9 - 18

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Quiz

After a brief review of counting hours worked, expressing this result as a decimal and calculating gross pay from an hourly rate, the classes took a quiz with these concepts.

No homework this weekend. Enjoy!

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More Time worked

We continued working with totalling the amount of time that is worked. We work with quarter hours. If a given time is not presented as on quarter of the hour, then we round to the nearest quarter hour.

There will be a quiz tomorrow checking their understanding of this concept.

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Time Cards

We began class discussing the various ways people clock in and out of work: hand written times, cards "punched" at a clock, ID cards with magnetic strips swiped at a reader, etc. This led us to calculating elapsed time. For some students, this is difficult, especially when having to borrow, carry, or regroup time.

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More Overtime Pay

We fnished going over the packet of overtime pay calculations from Friday. Then, we started a new handout that continues our practice calculating time-and-a-half and double-time overtime pay.

Homework: students should finish the back of today's worksheet

The earliest date that we can have a test on gross pay will be Friday, September 25th. However, it might not happen until next week. The test will cover the following gross pay calculations:

• hourly
• salary
• piece-rate
• commission
• average
• overtime

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Overtime Pay

We discussed how overtime pay is typically calculated with a time-and-a-half or a double-time rate. We will practice with this concept more on Monday.

Homework: From yesterday, use job listings to find jobs offering the different pay scales.

Have a great weekend!

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Average Pay

Our notes today reviewed working with mean, median, and mode. We talked about how these different calculations may be important when considering wages. The students identified that wages based on commission and piece-rate can be variable for each pay-period, so knowing the average pay for those jobs may be important.

An assignment was passed out that is not due until Monday. The students need to use newsppaer or internet job listings to find jobs offering the different pay scales.

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Gross Pay Quiz

For today's shortened schedule we had a quiz. The problems were about calculating gross pay from hourly, salary, and piece-rate pay scales. Many students enjoyed finding their names worked into the problems.

There is no homework today. Tomorrow we will calculate average pay.

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Piece-Rate Pay

We discussed various examples of piece-rate pay: being paid by the lawn mowed, being paid by the cars washed, etc ... We calculated gross pay based on a piece-rate. We also calculated gross pay based on a piece-rate that has different levels for increased work completed.

Homework: Pages 57 and 58 in the textbook: #22 - 37.

Again, there will be a quiz tomorrow on gross pay calculated from hourly and piece-rate pay scales. Remember, tomorrow is an Early Release Day for Fulton County Schools!

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Pay Scales, day 1

We started a new unit today: Pay Scales. We discussed the following concepts:

• Gross Pay
• Salary
• Commission
• Piecework Pay

We discussed the various pay periods:

• Weekly
• Bi-weekly
• Monthly
• Semi-monthly
• Annually

We then calculated gross pay based on hourly pay and salary.

Homework: Book pages 55 and 56: #1 - 21

We will quiz on this topic (along with Piece-wise pay calculations) on Wednesday!

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Computer Lab day

Today, we went to the computer lab and accessed community.coin3.com. We researched a variety of careers and found useful information about each: how much math is needed, education level, average pay, etc ...

This lesson leads us into our next unit: Pay Scales.

There is no homework today. Have a great weekend!

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