Emilia and I decided to split up the teaching for the last two lessons of our economics unit. Today, Emilia taught a lesson on saving money. In my opinion, this was certainly our best lesson so far! Emilia began by gathering the students together on the carpet area for an interactive read-aloud of The Berenstain Bears’ Trouble with Money. In the story, Brother and Sister Bear learn some important lessons about earning and spending money. Eventually, the bear cubs find the middle ground between being spendthrifts and little misers. Our first-graders really enjoyed listening to this story because it was both funny and realistic. They were excited to see that we had selected a book from the Berenstain Bears collection; obviously one of their favorites. Consequently, they did an excellent job paying attention during the story. In addition, they were active participants in the Emilia’s discussion of the book. Emilia had marked the pages she wanted to discuss with sticky notes. She did a great job clarify difficult vocabulary (such as miser) and explaining figures of speech. Emilia also asked the students to classify the ways the cubs earned money – revisiting the terms goods and services. After the reading, Emilia had prepared several discussion questions about how Brother and Sister Bear went about spending and saving their money. The only suggestion I have for Emilia (and really this is a reminder for myself as well – because I definitely know I do this too) is to be careful to include everyone in the discussion. During the lesson, several of the same students were raising their hands to answer questions. Others were sitting silently in the back or off to the side. It is important to make sure you engage all students in the discussion, especially the ones who look like they’re not paying attention. Calling them out by name to answer your question would probably be the best way to approach this. It’s really hard to try and remember everything at once – balancing effectively delivering the material with managing student participation is not easy – this is something that we’re going to have to work on.
Next, Emilia did a role play where the she in the students engaged in a money-saving “journey”. The ultimate goal was saving up enough money so that Emilia could buy the kitty cat she had always wanted. As Emilia is “walking” to the store to purchase the kitten she encounters several opportunities to buy objects. The idea was for the students to help her make choices about spending and saving along the way. As a class, the students must hold up signs labeled “spend” or “save”; voting on whether or not Emilia should buy the object in question. We brought in fake money and the actual objects to display the choices (a book, candy, flowers, food items, a UVA basketball, etc.). The students were asked to record the decisions on prepared worksheets, keeping track of their spendings and savings. Emilia also kept a record of the budget on the chalkboard. The students were really engaged and excited about this activity. They all enjoyed the opportunity to have a say in the decisions that were being made. During our planning, we tried to make sure that we would be able to keep their attention by making sure they were active – voting and recording the choices. I believe that this really worked because they were all eager to participate! Unlike our last lesson, this interactive learning experience was much less chaotic. We discovered a good way to keep the whole class involved in the learning!
In our classes, we talk a lot about the importance of the integration of other content areas. Although this lesson was about economics, we also incorporated a little math. The students conducted simple calculations during the savings journey to keep track of their budget.
No comments:
Post a Comment