Making a Purchase

This week was my turn to present to my peers. I was given the grade eleven foundations for college class and chose to create a lesson plan based on personal finance expectations. Continuing with the theme of last week’s blog I chose to create an activity that was based on real life events and provide students with knowledge that they could use. The lesson focused on researching the differences between a variety of payment options, including debit and credit cards. The consolidation activity then focused on choosing which payment method was most appropriate for a given situation. The students were encouraged to think about what the downside of each payment would be and how other factors would affect their decision. These factors included account balance, incentives, fees, and interest levels.     Even though I was only given 20-30 minutes to teach a portion of this lesson I feel as though the class was engaged in beneficial conversations and exploration. Instead of having the class research card options I provided each table with one of the payment methods. They were then instructed to calculate the cost of a TV purchase after factoring in account fees, annual fees, interest fees and incentives offered.     

     Once this was complete and all totals were recorded on the smart board we engaged in a discussion about which card would be the most reasonable choice. Most of my classmates chose a credit card with a high promotional cash back offer, since it lowered the overall cost of the TV. I then prompted them to think about what if this purchase was made later and the card was no longer in the promotional cash back period. This changed their thinking and made many students realize that they must consider these things when purchasing items in the future.
     In general, I was happy with how my mini-lesson unfolded but there are a few things that I would change. I was hoping to engage students in a discussion regarding the differences between specific cards, but this was difficult to do. This was difficult since each table had one method of payments and could not see the factors of the other tables’ payment options. It would have been beneficial to hear the differences between cards before hearing the total. This would have been different in a full lesson, as the students would have researched their own cards before being given a full set during the consolidation. 

Thanks for reading!

 Mr. Moore