Learning at the Grocery Store

Created Feb. 7, 2024 by Amanda Duffy, Ruth Sugar

Revision of Grocery Store Technology which was created under Creative Commons BY/NC/SA license, version 2.5, by Barbara Crouch for LEARN NC.  http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/3542?ref=search

 

 

Student Level


 

Materials

  • Paper and pencil
  • Grocery store items (real or graphic depictions)
  • Hand held Calculator
  • Calculator on Computer
  • Screen to project presentation information and show videos
  • Internet Connection to show videos

 

Lesson Objectives

  • Students will identify and explain the role of technology in retail.
  • Students will solve math problems using mental math, calculators, and computers.
  • Students will write and speak using  vocabulary related to grocery shopping.

Presentation

  • The instructor will project two grocery story receipts on the screen. 
  • The instructor will explain that there was a time when there were no machines to add up the cost of purchases or to create receipts to show the total money owed.  The cash register was not invented until 1879.  The instructor will show images of the first cash registers, and others as they have evolved.
  • The class will be asked to consider how a customer would figure out how much money to pay for their goods. What strategies might they have used? [they can round to the nearest dollar, count on their fingers, multiply, etc.]
  • As a group they will use mental math skills to calculate the amounts on the receipts that are projected on the screen.  The instructor will ask for suggestions for how to approach the calculations, model, and they will come to conclusions as a group.
  • The will then use the hand held and computer calculator to add up the items.
  • They will compare the answers to each approach.
  • They will discuss how math skills are useful when shopping.
  • The class will discuss the following: In addtion to the cash register, what other technology is used to help both the workers and the customers in a store?

Practice

1. Instructor will display grocery store items around the room. [Provide enough for approximatley 3 items per student] ( (They can be realia or images of items or a mix of both.) Each item will have a price tag.

2. Students will circulate around the room and select items to "purchase."

3. Students will come up to the "checkout" line and discover that they are not in the 21st Century, but rather they are in 1870.

4. There is no cash register, calculator, or computer, and pencil and paper are costly resources. So the students need to think of how they will approach figuring out how much their items will cost when they are "rung up." They also, want to be sure the sales clerk is not taking advantage of them and charging them too much. When they use mental math to figure out the costs, the instructor will ask the students if this is the exact amount they owe. The answer is no because it is an estimated value.

5. Students will  compute the exact value of their purchases using paper and pencil.  They will check their work using subtraction and using the calculator.

6. Students will write skits of a shopper and a cashier at a modern day grocery store.

Assessment

  • Quiz on content learned
  • Use of vocabulary in writing and performing skits

 


 


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