(Chapter 8 of Time for Business)
This topic has strong links to LO 1.8 and is also relevant for LO’s 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 2.1 and 2.6. The material dealt with in the chapter provides students with knowledge and understanding of the role and importance of financial institutions. It outlines the array of financial services on offer to households and individuals and should provide students with a strong foundation for further study of related topics including savings and borrowing. Yet again this is a familiar topic for those of us who have been teaching the ‘old’ Junior Cert Business Studies syllabus and I don’t think I changed my teaching approach too much from what I’d done in the past. I did however make a lot more use of the activities in the textbook and student activity book and felt this helped to dilute what can be an ‘information heavy’ topic. As ever students enjoyed the ‘doing’ aspects associated with filling forms and foreign exchange calculations, though a small number of students found the numeracy element challenging. It was a big advantage that so many of my students already had personal experience of financial institutions. The vast majority had at least one account in at least one financial institution. I made a particular point of examining the impact of digital technology on personal banking (links with LO 2.6 and TFB chapter 21). Students undertook some research and prepared posters and infographics outlining the how to use an ATM and the importance of PIN security. This was the first time that we made a concerted effort to develop infographics and the standard of the work varied widely. I think it was partly my fault and in future I will make sure to discuss and agree the success criteria with students in advance of the activity. I hope this will provide them with greater clarity and will lead to better quality infographics. I also made use of the following link (a UK website) in order to enable students to practice using an ATM: http://moneymatterstome.co.uk/Interactive-workshops/ATM.htm This worked really well on the interactive white board and students were able to explore a range of services on offer. Finally I focused quite a bit of attention on the bank statement. I think the ability to analyse this document is a very important skill for students to acquire. Co-author of Time for Business, Joe Stafford has previously written about teaching learning outcome 1.1. In this latest blog post he discusses assessment and reflection.
Assessment and Reflection. As already indicated in a previous blog post I made use of the traffic light self-assessment activity at the end of the Student Activity Book chapter and it was a useful and worthwhile exercise for both myself and the students. Many students were familiar with this type of formative assessment and they had no difficulty carrying out the task. There were no red lights amongst the group, which was pleasing! The most common orange lights related to Statement 7: I am able to make choices to make the best use of resources, and also Statement 9: I am able to understand the effect of my use of resources on other people’s lives. Based on the feedback I briefly revisited these issues and was able to clarify most of the misunderstanding through the use of further examples. I am also conscious that future chapters should improve understanding and abilities in these areas. Yet more layering! Students also reviewed the questions in the anticipation guide and there were some changes of opinion which reflected increased knowledge and understanding. Since this was my first interaction with the new teaching resources I felt it was necessary to try everything out. This was especially true of the mind map for which an exemplar is provided on page 7 of the activity book. For subsequent chapters, students are encouraged to create their own mind maps, so I think it’s a good idea to look at the exemplar in this chapter. My co-author, Siobhan O'Sullivan has previously written a blog post which shows the evolution of the mind-map for Chapter 1. This would be really useful to demonstrate to students how a mind map can be constructed. Mind maps can be drawn by hand or by making use of the websites listed on pg. xix of the Teacher Resource Book (TRB). Creating effective mind maps is a skill and takes time to develop and perfect; it won’t necessarily suit all students or teachers but some will find it very beneficial. At least half of my students had created mind maps in primary school and were familiar with the process. I also utilised the 'end of chapter reflection' on P9 of the Activity Book. If you intend to use this regularly there is a photocopiable template in Appendix 2 of the TRB. The only formative assessment tool which I didn’t make use of on this occasion was the exit ticket. That I will happily save for a rainy day! All in all I spent 7 class periods on the chapter and maybe that was a little too long. Perhaps it could have been quicker if we had textbooks available from the outset and I hadn't been so willing to listen to students…. but I assumed that this was necessary if honouring my commitment to student-centred lessons. Perhaps only time will tell if this was the right thing to do. Co-author of Time for Business Joe Stafford teaches Junior Cycle Business Studies in a mixed ability setting in a co-educational school with four 40 minute classes per week. In his previous blog post, co-author of Time for Business Joe Stafford reflects on his experience of teaching Learning Outcome 1.1 for the first time. In this post, Joe shares how students are engaging with the new material, how they are already linking to material from Strand 3 and how many students didn't realise that they get a free e-book with the hard copy of the textbook.
Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees! The last section of Chapter 1 deals with financial resources and the fact that “money doesn’t grow on trees”. Students offered great explanations of what that expression means and the discussions which followed gave rise to interesting questions, such as “Why doesn't the government just print lots of extra money?” I encouraged students to offer suggestions for this and some excellent answers were offered which related to money losing its value, etc. One student said that prices would probably rise, but she didn’t have the vocabulary to use the term ‘inflation’. I introduced the term and provided a very brief and simple explanation. Hopefully this will serve us well in Strand 3. The concepts of supply and demand also originated from students, although again they didn’t all have the understanding or vocabulary to deal with it in anything more than a very simple way. We used an example of concert tickets or the upcoming All Ireland Final to illustrate what happened when something we want is in strong demand but supply is strictly limited. This is also Strand 3 material and highlights how it’s almost impossible to avoid a blended approach to this new specification. I certainly had no intention when planning the lesson of introducing the concepts of supply and demand, but this accidental blending was unavoidable as the issue was raised by students. This will provide more opportunities for layering as we progress through the learning outcomes. When addressing the question of where future income may come from, students managed to list all of the familiar sources including wages, income from benefits, pension and student grants. One student expressed strong views on the receipt of benefits as an ongoing source of income. We steered clear of a full blown debate on this issue, but it will surely be revisited in subsequent chapters dealing with household income and the purpose of taxation. Again, it was interesting to see how students engaged with the material and how it impacted on their thought processes. Textbooks, Homework…and Abba! I should mention that students didn’t have textbooks for the first couple of lessons. I therefore posed a series of questions to kick start the discussion and to scaffold student learning. I used the whiteboard and the Edco Digital site to display some segments of the textbook to the whole class, particularly the definitions, images and textbook activities, but we didn’t read through the chapter in its entirety. The benefit of this was that there was a lot of discussion and debate amongst the class group and I really think this helped with student engagement. I also used the whiteboard to record the key points made by students during discussions. I tended to set a research task for homework to set the scene for the following lesson. Over the course of a week, the vast majority of students managed to get copies of text and activity books. At this stage I then assigned reading homework to ensure students had to engage with the text and revise material covered in class in previous lessons, for example, I asked the students to find some songs or quotations related to money. They really enjoyed this and found some very interesting quotations dealing with money, wealth and value, etc. Students were more than happy to read them out in class and we discussed what some of them really meant. For example, “nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing” and “we buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like”. Students are now in the process of making small posters using some of the quotations and these will be displayed in the classroom. On the music side we had contributions from Jessie J (Price Tag) and Abba (Money, Money, Money). We had a bit of fun with this! As the students did not have activity books from the outset, we had to tackle the activities in a large chunk at the end of the chapter. This was useful from the point of view of revision, but in future I will definitely have students use the activity book on an ongoing basis. Having said that, I was very happy that the textbook activities kept the students engaged and provided many opportunities for individual and group work. These activities were completed in their copies or comments were added to the white board. E-books and PowerPoints. I demonstrated to students how to access the free e-version of their textbook. This meant they could leave the textbook in their locker in school and could rely on the digital version for revision and homework. Some of the students hadn’t realised that this was possible and I was glad I’d brought it to their attention - as were they! Although I had a PowerPoint presentation prepared to support the textbook material (and our PowerPoint’s will be available as a digital resource soon) I didn’t actually make use of it. The student discussions and group work seemed to me to be more in line with the spirit of the new specification. Due to the high level of student engagement I felt the PowerPoints were not required for my lessons on this topic. If using them in future I would be inclined to use them in the background or as a way of revising and summing up a topic. Co-author of Time for Business Joe Stafford teaches Junior Cycle Business Studies in a mixed ability setting in a co-educational school with four 40 minute classes per week. |
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