Rounding Money Cheat Sheet for Middle & High School Math

"Wait, does $45.678 round to $45.67 or $45.68?" 

Your high school students are in the middle of solving compound interest problems, and suddenly you overhear an elementary skill rearing its ugly head-- rounding. Why is rounding money to the hundredths place such a sticking point for students, even older students in middle and high school? 

Why is Rounding Money So Hard? 

If your students struggle with rounding like mine have, there may be a few reasons: 

• Longer is Larger: Students see more numbers and think bigger value. $45.678 has more numbers than $45.68, so $45.678 must be a bigger number, right? 

• The rule without the reason: Many students memorize some variation of "5 or above, give it a shove" without ever understanding proximity. They don't see that $0.678 is physically closer to $0.68 than $0.67 on a number line. They just see a string of digits. 

• Place Value Disconnect: We rarely use physical pennies anymore, or cash in general. Lack of practice with real coins has added to the disconnect between cents and the hundredths place. 

Where does rounding money come up in the real world? 

We don't often see rounding money in the real world with credit cards, debit cards, and cash registers dominating over cash transactions, but they happen millions of times a day.

The Gas Station 9/10: If you look at any gas station sign, the price isn’t just $3.45, it’s $3.459. That tiny 9 at the end is 9/10ths of a cent, which seems like nothing. But $3.46 is 9x closer to $3.459 than $3.45 is to $3.459! So it really matters! 


Sales Tax Calculations: Here in Massachusetts, sales tax is 6.25%, making money amounts into the thousandths and beyond very common. Cash registers usually do all of the calculations for us, but students should know what is happening “behind the scenes”. 

Buying a $18.99 calculator at 6.25% sales tax results in a total cost of $20.176875, requiring rounding. Stores will round this amount to $20.18 and keep the fractional penny. 

Interest on Savings and Loans: Fractional pennies are common when calculating compound interest. If a student has $500.25 in an account earning 4.3% annually, the daily interest earned is $0.0589335617. The bank doesn't just ignore those decimals, they round to the nearest cent ($0.06). 

With millions of customers, rounding correctly means the difference between a bank being profitable or losing a fortune. Office Space, anyone? 

Unit Pricing at the Grocery Store: To compare a 12oz box of cereal to a Family Size 20oz box, you have to divide the price by the weight. A box of cereal that costs $5.49 for 18oz is $0.305 per ounce. To make it readable for the consumer, the store often rounds this to $0.31 per oz. on the tag. Knowing how to round helps a shopper decide if the Family Size is actually a better deal.

To help support students learning to round money, or working on practice problems where they have to round money (and may not be 100% confident), I made this rounding money cheat sheet reference for student notebooks.

Browse more money math

 

Solving equations visually using cut paper algebra tiles

Algebra tiles help make math visual for students, and paper algebra tiles take it a step further because we can cut them into fractions. In this post are a few short cut paper algebra tiles videos for solving 1-step and 2-step equations that include when x is a fraction.

This first equation is a simple 1-step equation where x is being divided by 4.

 

Next up is another 1-step equation where the coefficient of x is a negative fraction. 

In this 1-step video, x ends up being a fraction. We can show this by cutting the tiles to evenly distribute it.

Last is a 2-step equation where x is a fraction and the coefficient of x is negative.

There are more algebra tiles videos to see in this algebra tiles YouTube playlist.

More algebra tiles:

Factoring (free digital algebra tiles)

Solving equations

Multiplying polynomials

Middle school math algebra tiles tutorial (long version)

Algebra tiles resources pack

4 Editable New Year's Math Review Coloring Activities

Happy New Year 2026! If you're looking for a midyear review for your middle school 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade or algebra 1 students, there are 4 editable math review activities updated for 2026 linked below. Each comes with 20 review questions and a 2026 coloring sheet, and will be updated every year. The math reviews can be used to refresh skills or as semester 1 review when students come back from winter break. 

Each of the 4 math reviews comes with a 2026 coloring page and an editable 2-page worksheet with topics covered between back to school and the new year. 

Algebra 1 Midyear Review

Topics include:

• Multiplying binomials 
• Factoring quadratic trinomials 
• Finding parallel and perpendicular lines through given points
• Calculating slope and y-intercept from a table 
• Converting standard form equations to slope-intercept form 
• Identifying domain and range of graphs

This algebra activity is editable in PowerPoint and includes 20 questions. 

Students answer the questions on their worksheets, then color their 2026 based on the key. An answer key is included.

8th Grade Math Midyear Review

Topics include:

Domain and Range Finder Tools

Do your students struggle finding domain and range of graphs? I made a couple printable domain and range tools to help our students this year.

There are directions pointing students to look at x for domain and y for range as they drag each tool across the graphs. There are also directions printed on the tool for what to record for domain and range when a graph has an arrow.

We have always used rulers to find where graphs start and stop, but I wanted something a bit more self-teaching for our students this year. The graph cards in the photo are a free download on my blog here.

You can find the domain and range finder tools here on my website.

I also made a new domain and range of graphs cheat sheet for our students that you can find here in my drive.

UPDATE: A 3rd tool for finding increasing/decreasing intervals of graphs has been added to the file linked below.

> Browse all domain and range activities

Domain & Range Finder Tools

Winter math activities and classroom décor

We're getting so close to winter break! In this post, there is a collection of winter-themed math activities that hit the standards while keeping students engaged in learning their math before and after winter break. Many of the activities below were made to double as colorful winter math bulletin board displays of student work.

Slope winter snowflake activity

The first activity is a slope winter snowflake activity where students find the slopes of lines given a table, then decorate your classroom with their finished snowflakes. Anna L's students called their slope snowflakes "slope flakes" as they worked on the slope review activity coming back from winter break.

multiplication ornaments

These multiplication ornaments make a festive math bulletin board display of student work. Students can decorate their ornaments with bows and holly after calculating their products. There are 4 blanks also included for your own multiplication problems.

Winter proportional relationships snowflakes

There's a similar set of winter proportional relationships snowflakes for younger students. students plot coordinates of proportional relationships, then determine the equation of each snowflake's line. 

Winter snowflake 2-step equations

If your students are solving 2-step equations this winter, they can practice their solving on this winter snowflake 2-step equations sheet. After solving, students will need to read the inequalities in the key to figure out which color to color each section of their snowflake.

Slopes between winter animal pictures

This winter slope activity has students calculating the slopes between winter animal pictures in the coordinate plane. The x-axis is in months, and the y-axis is in days of the month. It's a fun, low-stress way to review slope.

Multiplying decimals mittens

If your students need practice multiplying decimals, these multiplying decimals mittens make a colorful winter bulletin board display of student work.

Multiplication ornaments activity

This set or Christmas multiplication ornaments have students multiplying multi-digit numbers that then become winter classroom décor. The multiplication problems include: 2x2 digit, 2x3 digit, 1x4 digit, and 2x5 digit. There are a bunch more Christmas math activities here for middle school, high school and elementary school math topics.

Winter picture puzzles math escape room

For a digital activity, this winter picture puzzles escape room has students solving for the values of winter pictures before going on to the next puzzle. 

Winter picture puzzles math escape room

The escape room is self-checking in Google Forms, and also comes as a printable PDF for days off devices. 

Editable New Year's math review

This is year #2 of updating this editable New Year's math review. There are versions for 7th grade math, 8th grade math, and algebra, and will be updated every year. They're each editable in PowerPoint so that you can customize the activity to your students' needs.

You can browse all winter math activities here: winter math

Browse Valentine's Day math activities

Free Discriminant Cheat Sheet for your Quadratic Formula Unit

In this post, I want to share a few resources for teaching the discriminant as part of a Quadratic Formula unit. 

This simple discriminant cheat sheet helps students make the connection between the value of the Quadratic Formula's discriminant and the number of real solutions the equation will have. It also shows examples of graphs with 1, 2, and 0 zeros and what the discriminant will look like in each case.

SIX SEVEN! Real Number System Math Sorting Activity

If you're a middle school teacher, I'm sure you've been hearing "Six Seven!" nonstop this year!  

We hadn't heard it in our algebra 2 class until about a month ago, when the 67 floodgates finally opened and now "67!" is an almost daily occurrence. It came up recently when solving x^2 - x = 42 (though this was on purpose).

As math teacher Ms. Campbell wrote, "Truth be told, it's the least offensive tiktok trend in years (at least for me!) And math teachers sure can have fun with it." Very true. And it's nice that math finally made it into a trend!

Six Seven Number Sort

This SIX SEVEN real number system sorting activity has students sorting numbers made of up of sixes and sevens into whole numbers, integers, rational numbers and irrational numbers categories. The activity includes the sorting mat, 18 numbers to sort, and a key.