After some deliberation we have selected our topic of Financial Literacy for high school seniors. Susan was supportive in selecting something that I could use within my classes. Even though we recently decided on our topic, I think we are off to a good start. Susan has come up with a good plan for a division of task for our project.
Tentative Division of Tasks
Unit Narrative Intro - Susan
Roles (with explanation paragraph) - Susan
Essential Questions - both
Standards (Tech and Academic) - Kimberly
Standards (AASL) - Susan
Assessments (with input from Kimberly) - Susan
Communicating Assessment - Susan
Student Accommodations (special needs and culturally underrepresented) - Susan
Demographics/Student Info - Kimberly
Lesson Plans (with input from Susan) - Kimberly
Resources (print and electronic) - both
Organization/page layout - Susan
Michigan recently came up with a plan to address financial literacy in our schools since the recent economic downturn and the high rate of bankruptcies. My plan is to see how the new financial literacy’s benchmarks match up with the current benchmarks in the Career and Technical Education department.
We have come up with these essential questions for our unit but may need to adjust them as our unit progress.
Essential Questions for the Library Media Specialist:
- How can I ensure the assessment is an accurate reflection of student performance?
- How can I ensure that there are enough appropriate resources for each student, and that students have the proper skills to locate the resources?
- How can I communicate the successful collaboration with teachers, administrators, parents and the community?
- How can I ensure the special needs of individual students are met?
Essential Questions for the Students:
- What are sources of income and how does education and career choices affect income?
- What is the difference between wants and needs?
- How does a savings account differ from a checking account?
- How is credit card different than debit card?
- What are some types of investments?
Essential Questions for the Teacher:
- How can I incorporate the benchmarks for the Jump Start Coalition with the Benchmarks for Career and Technical Education?
- What are ways that I can get the students to understand that financial literacy can affect them the rest of their lives?
- What are ways that I can take this information and make it relevant to the student’s lives?
We are now ready to start setting up our Wiki for this unit. Our group collaboration has gone well and both of us are participating and willing to listen to each other’s concerns and we have been working well together. I do not anticipate any problems in the future working with Susan and look forward to moving onto the next step.
Kimberly,
ReplyDeleteThis is a hot topic for a number of reasons which you have alluded to in your blog. I see potential to make this unit very practical for students and help them to gain knowledge,understanding, and skills in becoming financially astute adults. In Michigan, there are so many facets to our financial woes that you could literally have students pick real life scenarios and figure out a way to overcome a financial hurdle. If you start with personal finances and give each student a income/occupation and then have them portray individuals who experience a traumatic/or ecstatic financial life event (e.g. house foreclosure, or winning the lottery, 401K investment plummets, etc). Then students will be able to understand concepts such as federal taxes and home depreciation, and wall street corruption and greed.
As always, tease out the specific twenty-first century learning skills that you want to assess and that you feel will help students do well on standardized test.
Prof. K.