Uh oh! Van Gogh!By: Caitlin Malone

What’s up? My name is Maria. I am in Mr. Wells’ fourth grade

class, where we run the school café. I just so happen

to be the café’s manager!

The other day, Mr. Wells introduced a new student to the class. His name was Vincent, but he wanted us to call him by his last name—Van Gogh.

Van Gogh was kinda weird. He loved art class…

…but he hated math!

Mr. Wells noticed that Van Gogh was having trouble…

…so he came to me with an idea!

“Why doesn’t Van Gogh help out with the school café?” he asked. “Then he could learn

all about math!”

I was about to say that might not be the best idea when Mr. Wells added…

“After all, you’re such a great manager!”

…How could I say no?

I decided this was too big of a job to do on my own, so I asked Joe, Shae, and Nikki to help.

Joe suggested that we put him in charge of the register. So, Van Gogh became our new cashier!

The next day, Van Gogh sold three bags of chips to Ms. Honeycutt. The chips cost…

= $2.45

So, Van Gogh did the problem like this…

1 1 1

$2.45 x 3

$73.5

Uh Oh! Van Gogh!

“Do you see your mistake?” asked Joe.

$2.45x 3

$73.5

“You counted over your decimal place from the left, not the right.”

“Remember that the decimal point helps to hold the place

value. Next time, try estimating before you perform the problem.

If you know that $2 x 3 = $6, then your answer to the problem

should be close to that.”

Van Gogh tried the problem again, this time recognizing that the decimal point helps determine the value of the number…

$2.45x 3

$7.35

Way to go! Van Gogh!

The following day, a student came up to Van Gogh asking for a refund. She had just bought three ice cream cones, but realized one friend was absent today so she only needed two. She had already paid and asked Van Gogh for the amount of one cone. The total amount she paid for three cones was…

= $6.75

Van Gogh could not find the price of one cone, but he did know that if he divided the total amount by three (how many cones she bought) then he would know how much to give back…

$125 3 $6.75

Uh Oh! Van Gogh!

Shae stopped Van Gogh before it was too late. “You have to remember the decimal point!” she exclaimed.

$125 3 $6.75

“Remember that the decimal point tells us the difference between dollars and cents. By inserting the decimal point, you are telling the customer how many dollars and how many cents something is.”

Van go tried the problem again, this time remembering that the decimal point shows the difference between whole numbers and parts of the whole…

$1.25 3 $6.75

Way to go! Van Gogh!

Van Gogh was really starting to get it! Then at the end of the week, we

had a sale at the café, making everything…

20Of the original price!!!

Mr. Lowery came in after P.E. class very thirsty! He asked Van Gogh for a can of soda, which was one dollar. Van Gogh knew that twenty percent could be written as a decimal, and so he did the problem like this…

$1.00x .02

$.0200

Uh Oh! Van Gogh!

Nikki came to the rescue! “Your decimal point is not in the right place to equal twenty percent!” she pointed out.

“Twenty percent of one-hundred percent is the same as the fraction…

_20_ 100

And that fraction means twenty hundredths. What does twenty hundredths look like as a decimal?”

Van Gogh remembered that the number value right after the decimal point was tenths, so the number value after that was hundredths! He thought about it and wrote the number like this…

.20

…but that looked like two tenths to Van Gogh. He wondered, “Does two

tenths equal twenty one-hundredths?”

Nikki suggested he look at them both as fractions and compare…

_20_ _2_100 10

Van Gogh remembered that he could cancel out a zero from the numerator and denominator because they made a fraction equal to one. So, that means that they are the same!

_20_ = _2_ x _10_ = _2_ x _1_

100 10 10 10 1

_20_ = .20100 222

Van Gogh decided to try the problem again…

$1.00x .20$0.20

Way to go! Van Gogh!

Van Gogh soon became one of the best math students in our

class! He often did problems on the chalkboard to show us how

to solve the problem.

Also, he found other ways to help make our café better…

…with his art!

The End