For their first quarter final project 6th graders are using basic mathematics skills, such as ratios, decimals and concept of currency to plan their dream vacation.

The middle school students are doing what their parents usually do, create a vacation with a given budget. This is the first quarter final project, it’s due for the 25th of September and contains 3 stages to complete. 6th graders research in computers for all information. Students, when choosing their destination, cannot repeat cities, but can repeat countries.

“Our math project is to create a dream vacation, it’s for 6th grade students and it’s for a power standards about decimals, working with decimals, other operations with decimals,” Tommy Meyer, 6th Grade Math Teacher, said.

Students are booking a real vacation, they’re planning how much they are spending each day, are looking for flights, for hotels, for restaurants prices and for activities to do at their city. 6th graders need to record everything on their itinerary.

“Students are going to present their itinerary, what they are doing each day in their country with detail, what they are planning on spending each day, show us their hotel, their flights,” Meyer said.

The budget sheet is where students keep count of how much money they have spent. Students have $10,000 to spend in anything they want. The money spend is going to be converted into COP after research.

“We are doing it in stages, so the first one was the budget sheet, with their hotel cost, and how much they are planning on spending each day, to make sure that they can do it for under ten thousand dollars,” Meyer said.

Geography and climate helps students know where they are, how is the city and what things to bring to their vacation. The climate is an important factor because if the country is rainy, students bring to their vacation implements to avoid rain.

“The second stage was the geography and climate, they have to present maps and show how they are getting there. For the climate they need to find information about the monthly rainfall,” Meyer said.

The final presentation has to have city’s map, pictures about the city, the climate, the budget sheet and a statement saying what students did with the money they didn’t spend.

“And the last step is the presentation, they are organizing their slides to present all the information they’ve gathered,” Meyer said.

The students had fun doing the project and think that the project was a great way of teaching them a difficult topic.

“I had fun doing this project because I thought it was a great way of teaching and also it was great to choose my favourite country,” Mara Montoya, 6th grader, said.

This project helps students know the world better, by seeing their classmate’s presentations, also, helps them to understand a difficult topic as decimals and ratios.

“This was the best project ever!,” Pedro Gomez, 6th grader, said.