8th Grade Task: Sally's Car Loan

8th Grade Task: Sally's Car Loan

Standards & Objectives

Essential and guiding questions: 
  • Is the correct answer 27.63 or 39.63 months?
  • Can you round off your answer in this problem?
  • What is the meaning of the decimal part of your answer?
  • What would the last payment be?
  • What if the problem had talked about Sally paying 4% interest on the amount she borrowed?
  • How can there be a line with positive slope and a line with negative slope that can represent this situation?
  • Can you come up with equations of lines for the two equations?
  • Find a way to verify that these equations are correct.

Activity/Task Variations

Blooms taxonomy level: 
Understanding
Differentiation suggestions: 

If students can’t get started…. 
Assessing 

  • How much was the car? How much money did Sally pay for a down payment? How much does she owe when she drives off the lot?
  • How much did she pay off in the first 12 months?

Advancing

  • How can we use this to help us with how long it will take her to pay off the car?
Extension suggestions: 

If students finish early….
Assessing

  • Are these the only two possible graphs?

Advancing

  • Come up with another graph that would work for this situation. Follow the directions for part B.