Grade 6 Ontario Curriculum
How ClassCents supports Grade 6 students in meeting Ontario Curriculum expectations through engaging classroom economy activities.
Subject
Standards
Activities
Aligned
Mathematics Expectations
Every expectation below pairs with classroom economy activities you can run this week.
Mathematics
5 standards
Use mental math strategies to calculate percents of whole numbers, including 1%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 25%, and 50%, and explain the strategies used
ClassCents Connection
Discount days and percentage bonuses give benchmark percents a payoff: computing 25% off a store price, or a 10% payday bonus, is mental math with your own money on the line.
Activities
- Discount-day drills: announce a 10% or 25% off store event and have students mentally compute final prices before shopping.
- Bonus math: when a 15% payday bonus is announced, students compute their own bonus mentally and verify when the award posts.
- Strategy share: explain how you found 15% (10% + 5%?) of a real balance, comparing approaches as a class.
Select from among a variety of graphs, including histograms and broken-line graphs, the type of graph best suited to represent various sets of data; display the data in the graphs with proper sources, titles, and labels, and appropriate scales; and justify their choice of graphs
ClassCents Connection
A balance changing over time wants a broken-line graph; a distribution of purchase prices wants a histogram. Transaction-history data lets students face that choice with numbers they generated.
Activities
- Broken-line savings graph: plot your balance at the end of each week for two months from the transaction history and justify the graph choice.
- Purchase-price histogram: bin every store purchase the class made this term and display the distribution with proper labels and scale.
- Graph-choice debate: given three economy data sets, argue which graph type suits each and why.
Identify different types of financial goals, including earning and saving goals, and outline some key steps in achieving them
ClassCents Connection
This expectation is the ClassCents savings-goal feature, verbatim: students set a real target, break it into weekly earning milestones, and track progress toward it in the app.
Activities
- Goal setting: each student picks a reward, sets it as a savings goal in ClassCents, and writes the weekly earning steps needed to reach it.
- Earning vs. saving goals: state one of each (“earn 50 this month” vs. “save 100 by June”) and outline how the steps differ.
- Milestone check-ins: review goal progress every payday and record whether the plan needs adjusting.
Identify and describe various factors that may help or interfere with reaching financial goals
ClassCents Connection
The transaction history shows students exactly what helped or hurt their goal — the extra job they took, the impulse purchase that set them back — turning reflection into evidence-based analysis.
Activities
- Helped-or-hurt audit: review your own transaction history and label each entry as moving you toward or away from your savings goal.
- Barrier brainstorm: list factors that interfered with goals this term (impulse buys, missed job days) and strategies that helped (extra roles, skipping store day).
- Advice column: write anonymous advice to a hypothetical classmate whose history shows a stalled savings goal.
Describe trading, lending, borrowing, and donating as different ways to distribute financial and other resources among individuals and organizations
ClassCents Connection
The classroom economy makes distribution visible: students can donate points toward a class cause (recorded by the teacher), and trading, lending, and borrowing can be explored through discussion and simulation grounded in their real balances.
Activities
- Class donation drive: students pledge points toward a shared class goal and the teacher records each donation, then the class discusses how donating differs from spending.
- Paper lending simulation: role-play a loan between two students on paper — terms, repayment schedule, what could go wrong — and discuss why borrowing costs something.
- Four-ways sort: given classroom economy scenarios, classify each as trading, lending, borrowing, or donating, and describe who benefits in each.
Implementation Strategies
Practical strategies for implementing ClassCents with Grade 6 students to maximize curriculum alignment.
Make Savings Goals Universal
Grade 6 FL is about goals — every student should have one running.
- Require an active savings goal per student
- Review progress at every payday
- Distinguish earning goals from saving goals explicitly
Schedule Percent Events
Benchmark percents need occasions — create them.
- Run monthly discount days (10%, 25%, 50%)
- Announce occasional percentage payday bonuses
- Always compute mentally first, verify after
Explore Distribution Honestly
Donating works in-app via teacher-recorded transfers; lending is a rich simulation.
- Run one class donation drive per term
- Simulate loans on paper with explicit terms
- Debrief who benefits from each kind of exchange
Match Graph to Question
Time-series vs. distribution is the Grade 6 graphing decision.
- Plot balances over time as broken-line graphs
- Bin purchase prices into histograms
- Debate graph choices before drawing
Ready to Implement Grade 6 Standards?
Start building your classroom economy and watch your Grade 6 students develop foundational skills through curriculum-aligned activities.