Mr. Wormwood, one of the characters in Roald Dahl's Matilda, is not the most trustworthy of characters. Have student groups take on the roles of car salespeople and play a game to see who can make the most profit by selling refurbished cars and sawdust. Learners use arithmetic to solve self-created word problems centered around Mr. Wormwood's questions about profit.

Concepts

profit, profits, roald dahl

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Additional Tags

english language arts

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Instructional Ideas

• Provide index cards for learners to write their math questions to use during the game
• Talk about the trustworthiness of Mr. Wormwood and discuss if he makes his money is ethical
• Model how to make the math questions, or help class members write them
• Put learners of similar math levels into the same groups

Classroom Considerations

• Requires a class set of of the book Matilda by Roald Dahl
• Substitute token values relevant to your country or type of currency

Pros

• Allows learners to create their own word problems
• Provides extension ideas in drama to make cross-curricular connections

Cons

• The title is misspelled on the resource

Common Core

3.OA.D.8 3.NBT.A.2 4.OA.A.3