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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.
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 free rounding money cheat sheet reference for student notebooks. It's a 1/2 sheet that supports students rounding money to the nearest cent.
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| Rounding to the nearest cent activity |
This new set of rounding money task cards has students rounding money given in 5 decimal places to the nearest cent. The cards get more difficult as the activity progresses, allowing for easy differentiation.
> Browse more financial literacy activities
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| Consumer math activities bundle |
More rounding resources
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| 3rd grade rounding references |
These rounding numbers references are part of a 3rd grade math word wall.
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| 5th grade place value |
A firm grasp of place value helps when developing rounding skills. This place value reference is in my blog's free math resource library, and is part of a large 5th grade math word wall.
More "sticky" math topics:
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)
Middle school math algebra tiles tutorial (long version)
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| Algebra tiles resources pack |
4 Editable New Year's Math Review Coloring Activities
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.
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.
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
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Multiplying decimals mittens |
If your students need practice multiplying decimals, these multiplying decimals mittens make a colorful winter bulletin board display of student work.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
