Charlotte Morgan and the Great Big Math Problem--Chapter 23 Two Days to go

 This is my next book.  

It is currently being copy edited, (so there will be the occasional typo in this version) and I am having a few illustrations done.

I am including the tag #steemiteducation because I wrote this thinking like a teacher.  The characters use math and describe their math thinking as they work through problems.  I am a former 1st, 3rd, and 5th grade teacher, so I used my experience and background from those years as I wrote this.

Update: The book is now available for preorder on Amazon.  Click here to get it on Kindle.

Click here for chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 21, Chapter 22

Summary: Time for the Math Bee is getting close.

Chapter 23  Two Days to go

I banged on the floor of the tree house with my gavel.  “Here Ye!  Here Ye!  This meeting of the Number Investigators is now called to order!”  The four of us sat on  the floor surrounding several large pieces of poster paper and several different color markers.

“Here Ye?  Here Ye?” asked Marcus.

“We discussed town criers today in Social Studies, they used to shout ‘Here ye! Here ye!’ to spread news,” explained Sally.

“Yes, that is true.  And I like it,” I replied.  “But we have less than 48 hours until the math bee.”

“Actually we have less than 40 hours,” said Marcus, and then he looked at his watch, “It is 6:30 now, so we have…”

“39 hours,” the rest of us shouted.

“Thank you Mr. Sunshine,” Sally said making a face at him.

I took a deep breath, “okay, less than 40, the point is it is now crunch time.  I pulled off some word problems off the Internet that we can work through.  It was my dad that got us the extra poster paper from school for use to work big on.”  Working big was when we could draw big solutions to our problems and we liked using big paper.

I put a word problem down in the middle us.  “The first problem I pulled up was one about shopping.”

“Cool,” replied Sally.  

Marcus picked the paper and read the problem aloud, “Devon went to the electronics store with $50.  He wanted to get two video games that cost $19.95 each.”

“They must be on sale,” interjected Aaron.

Marcus continued reading the problem, “He also wants a new controller for $29.95.  Can he purchase these items with the money he has?  If he can, how much change does he get back?  If he can’t but them with money he has, how much more does he need?”  Marcus put the problem in the middle.

“I think we all know that he will clearly need more money,” said Aaron.  “$19.95 might as well be $20.  And $29.95 might as well be $30, so one controller and one game is right at $50, but he also wants the second game, so he’ll need about $20.”

“But we need the exact amount,” said Sally.  “There’s nothing in that question about rounding, or being in the ball park. We would need it down to the final penny.”

Marcus grabbed a marker and began writing down the numbers on the large poster paper: $19.95, $19.95, $29.95.

“$19.95 plus $19.95 gets us $39.90.  Add that number to $29.95 and we get $69.85,” said Marcus as he finished working his numbers.

“So then we need to find out how much more does Devon need?” I said.

“We have to subtract $50 from $69.85,” replied Sally and she took the marker from Marcus.  She quickly worked the problem on the paper, “It gives us $19.85.  So the answer would be, No, her does not have enough to get the stuff, and he needs $19.85 more in order to do them.”

“I wonder why these problems never ask for sales tax?” Aaron asked.

“I don’t know.  Let’s just be thankful they don’t,” I replied. 

“Okay, we finished one, let’s work on another,” said Aaron.

We worked on two more word problems that night.  I know that most people would consider it weird to work on word problems for fun, but we also wanted to do well in the math bee.  Sally and I would be representing Mrs. King’s class, Marcus and Aaron would representing Mrs. Seal’s class.  We had earned our reputation as Number Investigators and we wanted to keep our reputation.

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