Bearing in mind that the NZC highlights the skills of managing self and using language, symbols and text, I wanted to give my students the opportunity to engage with some form of financial literacy. I did this by adapting a HyperDoc from Middle School Minds, and the Twitter hashtag #filemakeacopy which use Creative Commons. I really appreciate the work that has gone into these and the willingness of these educators for us to adapt them to our own NZ contexts. As a 'newbie' in the area of HyperDocs, it was also a chance to work with my students and see if this type of teaching and learning style suited them.
The NZC curriculum objectives I wanted to cover were:
Social Studies L5: Understand how economic decisions impact on people, communities, and nations.
English: L5 Reading
integrates sources of information and prior knowledge purposefully and confidently to make sense of increasingly varied and complex texts
selects and uses appropriate processing and comprehension strategies with confidence
thinks critically about texts with understanding and confidence
monitors, self-evaluates, and describes progress, articulating learning with confidence.
Integrate somewhat with Maths where the AO state "In a range of meaningful contexts, students will be engaged in thinking mathematically" |
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My original idea was to create a Monopoly-style game that saw students 'holidaying' in the countries they landed. This morphed into a World Trip Project where they won a contest and then through a random generator were given a budget. I still got to be the bank - which was as much a challenge for me as for them.
The unit took just under four weeks - which was somewhat longer than I anticipated. We had tournament week in the midst of that - which meant some disruption for several students. Students were initially really excited about choosing places to travel - then the reality hit of checking whether they needed visas, insurances (would they risk it?) and goodness- were plane tickets really that expensive?
We ended up splitting our lessons, with the first half using a PDF textbook of Geography skills and concepts, so my Y10 students who wish to take NCEA Level One geography next year will have the understandings of the terminology and concepts they need to succeed. This also enabled the students who do not prefer computer work a chance to complete set activities and exercises.
The second half of the lesson the students could work at their own pace through the World Trip Document. I used Google Classroom to set it as an assignment, so each student had their own copy. This meant students could also access the document from home if required. We tried to link it to SeeSaw, but this was not working yet.
During the course of the project students had to compare costs from different providers, compare what different providers offered and make decisions based on this. They plotted their course on a personal Google Map, and used the tools in this to measure distance and chart routes. Students had to plot travel, and compare costs of a variety of travel methods, including different types of hire vehicles and public transport. This then impacted their choice of places to stay. Some choose to buy a tent, but then had to research freedom camping areas, others choose to stay with family and some learnt the hard way if you splash out for a five start motel, you will be writing a letter to the bank (AKA me) for a loan to complete the rest of the trip. Students also costed out food for several days on the trip, and this was interesting - yes, if you choose to eat McDs for all the days if you wish - BUT how might your energy levels be impacted ... or comparing the cost of a capsicum in the USA to one in New Zealand.
I will now go and in a quiet space read their reflections, comment on them and we will file these in their hard copy learning portfolios.
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