Teaching Tax Tip and Discount

“Oh, this is actually useful math that we will use someday!”

I love how easy it is to connect to the real world during this unit.

Before you start teaching tax, tip, discount and markup you’re going to want to start with rounding practice. I did this in two ways: Desmos and 99 Math (my new favorite way) the kids were begging to do more!

Vocabulary is everything: be sure to reinforce tax=gratuity. Some assignments you find may also include commission so you can also quickly go over that, I usually forget to mention t because it isn’t part of our curriculum but it is important to know!

They struggle the most with markup because it isn’t familiar to them. I think next year, I may have them pretend to be business owners that need to make a profit. 

That way I can tie the skill in later when we get to the percent of change.

I’ve listed a few tax, tip, and discount lesson ideas below:

1. Put the classroom on sale for tax tip and discount

This one works like a scavenger hunt! Sales tags are placed on various objects around the classroom. Students walk around and calculate the price of each and keep track on their paper. This one is relatively low prep and fun! I printed the tags on Astrobrights paper and laminated them for longevity! If you are interested in this activity, it is from Scaffolded Math & Science here!

2. Turn your classroom into a restaurant

Buy some tablecloths to place over a group of four desks and grab some to-go menus from local restaurants! You can download the free activity I created here for more instructions!

Student feedback: “Can we do this again but with different restaurants?” 

3. Bring in sales receipts

I try to remember to keep customer copies of receipts whenever I go out for this one. I pass them out to groups of students and they use whiteboards to calculate the tip and total. Easy-peasy!

I was so happy to see this post on Facebook so my students and I could analyze the mistakes:

4. Turn the classroom into a cafe

For my math 7 students, I used the following Coco’s Cafe activity. Students have to use a menu to complete orders and then calculate the totals after finding the tax and discounts.

Unfortunately, my math 8 students had already wrapped up the Proportions unit but once they heard I was doing the Hines Cafe activity with the other classes, they begged me to do it for them as well. So, I figured out a way to incorporate it for them by creating a Multi-Step Inequalities menu choice board!

I headed to PowerPoint and created a customized logo and added the logo to my activity sheets! I then ordered a green apron from Amazon (affiliate link) and used my Cricut to add my logo.

For an incentive, I made Iced Mochas (chocolate milk topped with whipped cream) for each student who completed their tasks and wanted one! I bought about 3 gallons of chocolate milk and 2 cans of whipped cream which was more than enough!

“This is the best class ever!”

My students loved this activity and begged me to do it again!

This was one of those days that reminded me why I became a teacher: to get kids excited for math class!

You can download a bundle of tax, tip, and discount activities HERE.

Check out other middle school math teaching tips here!