Lesson 1: Ways of Earning Money

Teacher

• Show five job ads and tell the class they are made up for this lesson:
  • A. Café barista: $25 per hour
  • B. Office assistant: $58,500 p.a.
  • C. Phone shop sales: $400 per week + 5% commission on sales
  • D. T-shirt printer: $1.80 per shirt printed
  • E. Children's book author: 10% royalty on every book sold
• LIT Read the ads aloud together. Ask students to point out the words they have not seen before, such as "p.a.", "commission" and "royalty". Tell them each one is explained today.
• Students vote with a show of hands for the job they think pays the most.

Key question: Can we actually tell which job pays the most?

Expected: No, it depends. We need to know how many hours the barista works, how much the salesperson sells, how many shirts are printed and how many books are sold.

Key question: What would we need to do to compare the barista with the office assistant?

Expected: Find out the barista's hours, then put both jobs over the same time, for example per week.

• Show the unit map:
  • Lesson 1: the different ways people are paid
  • Lesson 2: extra pay for overtime, weekends and public holidays
  • Lesson 3: weekly, monthly and yearly pay, tax and take-home pay
  • Lessons 4–6: earning interest on savings
  • Lessons 7–9: spending money and making financial decisions
• Tell the class that by the end of Lesson 3 they will be able to answer "Which job pays the most?" properly.

Students

• Read the ads, vote, and suggest what extra information is needed.

Teacher

• ICT Share the quiz link. Students answer on their own, calculators allowed.
• Watch the live summary as answers come in.

• AfL When everyone has submitted, show the class summary for 1–2 minutes and go over the question with the lowest score, starting from its most-chosen wrong option.
• If fewer than about 70% got Q1 or Q2 right, model one percentage example before Worked example 1.
• Note the low-scoring questions for later. Q3, Q4, Q5, Q7 and Q8 feed the Lesson 2 starter. Q6 feeds Lesson 3.

Try the quiz as students see it. Answers submitted here go to the teacher's results, so delete any test answers before the lesson.

What the teacher sees (example from 12 simulated responses, not real students). The Google Forms summary gives the class score range, then shows for each question how many students chose each option. Here 5 students chose 3.30 for Q5, so they read the clock time as a decimal, and 4 chose 48 for Q6, so they took a month as 4 weeks.

Students

• Complete the quiz on their own.

Teacher

• Reveal the learning intention and success criteria.
• Define wage and salary using ads A and B.
• LIT Students start their vocabulary cards with "wage" and "salary".

Key question: Ella, the barista in ad A, works 20 hours this week at $25 per hour. What is her wage?

Expected: $25 × 20 = $500.

Key question: If the office assistant works 5 extra hours this week, does their pay go up?

Expected: Usually not. A salary is a set amount for the year, paid in equal parts, unless the contract says otherwise.

Students

• Answer when named, then fill in the wage and salary cards.

Teacher

• Model one example of each, writing every step on the board.
• Call a named student to say each step.
• LIT After each example, students fill in that vocabulary card.

Worked example 1: commission. Jess sells phones. She is paid a retainer of $400 per week plus 5% commission on her sales. This week she sold $6,000 of phones.

• Commission = 5% of $6,000 = 0.05 × $6,000 = $300
• Total pay = $400 + $300 = $700

Key question: Why do we write 5% as 0.05 and not 0.5?

Expected: Per cent means "out of 100", so 5% = 5 ÷ 100 = 0.05. 0.5 would be 50%.

Key question: Is the 5% worked out on the $400 or on the $6,000?

Expected: On the $6,000. Commission is a percentage of what she sells, not of her retainer.

• Show the retainer–commission diagram. Point to the arrow. The 5% comes from the $6,000 of sales, and the $400 is added afterwards.
• We do: Jess sells $9,000 of phones next week. Students work out her pay in their books before the answer is shown. (Expected: 0.05 × $9,000 = $450. $400 + $450 = $850.)

Worked example 2: piecework. Tom prints T-shirts and is paid $1.80 for each shirt. On Tuesday he printed 240 shirts.

• Pay = $1.80 × 240 = $432

Key question: Is Tom paid for his time or for what he produces?

Expected: For what he produces. The more shirts he prints, the more he earns.

Worked example 3: royalty. An author earns a 10% royalty on each book sold. The book sells for $25 and 3,000 copies are sold.

• Royalty per book = 10% of $25 = 0.10 × $25 = $2.50
• Total royalty = $2.50 × 3,000 = $7,500

Key question: How is a royalty like commission?

Expected: Both depend on sales. A royalty is paid to the person who created the work each time it is sold or used. It can be a percentage of the price, like this book, or a set amount each time, like a song being streamed (Q4).

Students

• Copy each example, try the "we do" on their own, and complete the commission, piecework and royalty cards.

Teacher

• Hand out the worksheet.
• AfL Circulate and check two things: that percentages are changed to decimals correctly, and that commission is worked out on the sales, not on the retainer.
• Students who need support use their vocabulary cards as worked examples. Students who finish early start the extension.

Students

• Work on their own.

• Q1. Leo works 15 hours at $23.50 per hour. What is his wage?

• Q2. A car salesperson earns 3% commission. She sells a car for $28,000. How much commission does she earn?

• Q3. A fruit picker is paid $3.20 for each bucket of fruit and picks 85 buckets. How much does she earn?

• Q4. A musician earns a royalty of $0.004 each time her song is streamed. The song is streamed 250,000 times. How much does she earn?

• Q5. Jess (from Worked example 1) earned $820 this week, made up of her $400 retainer plus 5% commission. What were her sales?

• Extension. Many Aboriginal art centres are owned and governed by Aboriginal people. When an artwork sells, most of the money goes to the artist, and a small part goes back to the art centre for its running costs and community programs (Desart, n.d.). An art centre sells a painting for $1,800 and keeps 25% commission. How much does the artist receive?

Teacher note: NESA lists commission on artworks among the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures connections for this content (NESA, 2022). Desart is the association of Central Australian Aboriginal art centres. The $1,800 and the 25% are made up.

Teacher

• Go back to the five job ads. Ask students to say, for each ad, which way of being paid it is.
• Go back to the success criteria. Students tick the ones they can now do on their exit ticket.

Key question: Which way of being paid would you choose for your first job, and why?

Expected (any reasoned answer): A wage, because the pay is the same each week. Or commission, because good sales can earn more, though the pay changes from week to week. Or piecework, because working faster earns more.

• Hand out the exit ticket and collect it before students leave.
• Preview Lesson 2: "Next lesson: what happens to Ella's pay on a Sunday?"

Exit ticket

(a) Match each term to its meaning: wage, salary, commission, piecework, royalty.

• a payment for each item produced
• pay worked out as hours worked × hourly rate
• a payment to a creator each time their work is sold or used
• a set amount per year
• a percentage of the value of sales

(b) Noah earns $350 per week plus 4% commission on his sales. This week he sold $5,000 of goods. What is his total pay?

Success criteria: tick the ones you can now do. For any you cannot tick, write the step that is still unclear.

Students

• Complete the exit ticket on their own.

After the lesson

• AfL Mark the exit tickets against the success criteria.
• AfL Read the unticked success criteria alongside the answers. Compare each student's exit ticket with their diagnostic quiz. Students who struggled with both get the three-column table scaffold in Lesson 2.