Perry the penguin wants to buy a new scooter, but he doesn't have any funds! Walk your kids through the short book Less Than Zero, and have them track his borrowing, spending, and saving on a line graph while you read. Pupils will learn about interest, savings goals, and more.

Concepts

borrowing, compound interest, saving money, line graphs, money, negative numbers, making predictions, savings accounts, banking

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Additional Tags

social studies

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Instructional Ideas

• Use this in a unit on money or borrowing
• Have kids track their own saving and spending on a personal graph that they share from time to time; you may wish to do this with class money if you have that type of system in place

Classroom Considerations

• You will need to borrow or buy a copy of Less Than Zero by Stuart J. Murphy
• The included presentations are meant for interactive whiteboards; if you don't have one, these are not essential to the lesson

Pros

• Comes with the graphing page and suggested assessments
• Cross-curricular plan combines language arts with math and economics concepts
• Effectively uses the book to teach math concepts and practice graphing
• Answers are paired with the questions written in the lesson plan

Cons

• None

Common Core

W.2.1 W.2.3 W.3.1.a W.3.3.a W.4.1.a W.4.1.b W.4.3.a SL.2.2 SL.3.2 SL.4.2 2.OA.B.2 4.MD.B.4