Foundations Newsletter

Shopping is one of the interests of our girls in FWC. I’ve observed how much they love fashion, clothes, bags, shoes, etc. These has been the usual topic of their conversations and often I see them browsing on online shops. So I thought of allowing them to experience this in our lesson through an online shopping activity. This activity is in alignment to HCT’s philosophy of Learning by Doing and aims to reinforce learned knowledge to practical application.

The objectives of the lesson are: to apply the percent equation and to solve for the sale price given the original price and the percent discount.

After a discussion of the concepts of percent application and finding sale price, I explained to the students what they had to do in the activity.

The students were grouped with 3 to 5 members in each group. They were given a shopping list with five different items that they need to purchase from the Online Shop. The “fancy” online shop was made accessible through the Blackboard. The challenge is that the total orders should not exceed their credit limit of 3000 dirhams. Another constraint is that there is an additional shipping charge of 2% of the total orders which should also be inclusive of the credit limit. A payment receipt was also provided for them to record and manage their orders. They were given a maximum of 20 minutes to finish the task.

I have observed how excited my students were when they started browsing the different items. After which I’ve seen them plan and decide on how to go through the activity within the given time. There were division of tasks, discussion, arguments, emotions and excitement. There were teamwork and decision-making. It was a beautiful sight!

This activity did not just help my students to learn about the lesson on sale price. This also allowed them to experience online shopping, using credit limit, filling-in receipts and adding shipping cost. More importantly, this LBD activity engaged the students to the learning process and helped them develop critical thinking skills.

The students’ feedback was also overwhelming. One of my students said that this online shopping activity will be her inspiration in her project proposal in English. One student commented : “I was enjoying so much that I was not even aware that I was actually doing Math and I understood the lesson that easy.”