Hello, I am a high school special education teacher teaching Math Skills 2. In Math Skills 2, we focus on applying math concepts. Working on
Math Skills for assisting students when they leave high school. I am working
with low functioning students who have great difficulty with adding and
subtracting. My principal is willing to purchase a text book for my class if I can find one.
Does anybody know a good text book for teaching math skills (banking,
purchasing a car, figuring out interest, taxes (sales and income), etc.)?
I have access to Basic Math Skills, Consumer Math Skills and Life Math
Skills but have heard mixed reviews on these books.
Thank you for your help.
Re: Math Books
Lakeshore has a catalog for older students that has a lot of those types of skills. Might check that out.
my daughter’s 5th grade teacher did a really fun activity with the students to teach them these concepts. She didnt’ use a math book but what she did was each person had to draw items out of the hat. In one hat it said, you could be married have a job that makes x amount of dollars, you have x amount to spend on a car, you have x amount to spend on an apartment, x amount for food. The kids learned about budgeting, they had to go through the newspaper to find places they could rent, perhaps share a room, how to budget for a car, etc…It was one of my daughter’s favorite activities….and the kids learned how hard it is for a parent to budget their money. you could expand this type of idea with use of a checkbook, savings book, what about using credit cards…showing them how much interest they are paying if they only pay the minimum amount….
Have you checked out Educators publishing Service–EPS? you may also look into some speech and language catalogues because they have to do these type of activities to reteach life skills with people who have Traumatic Brain Injury or Aphasia. I remember seeing something like this in a Lingui Systems catalogue….