April 12th Update — World Resources & Budgeting Like Adults!

Very quick update for tonight!

Reminders:

  • Class Photo and Panorama Shot tomorrow — dress nicely
  • Bring a pink t-shirt or accessory for International Day of Pink tomorrow
  • Bring math model supplies for tomorrow in a bag with name
  • Finish resources reading if not done (most of you have finished)
  • Next Lit Circle meeting is on Thursday (time in class tomorrow to work)
  • Math Budget created on excel — did you send it via google drive to Ms. D?

Check out the LINKS on the previous post related to our great discussions today about economics, world trade, and more. Peter suggested two articles you might like to read related to our discussions, as well, so I added them to the links page.

Today we started making a resource map of the world, identifying country names, level of wealth, and top exports using web resources such as the District’s subscription to World Book Online.

As part of Math, today we continued our work on budgets. Everyone moved in with a friend into an apartment (we pretended we were 25 years old) and was given a salary. Using that salary, students had to make a monthly budget and document it on excel. First, we had to brainstorm all the costs associated with being an independent person such as rent, electricity, gas, food, transportation, entertainment, taxes, savings, etc. You may want to continue this discussion at home. How does your family make a budget? Do you have a document for your budget? How do you make decisions about how money will be spent? How much is put aside for savings?

Everyone had some great questions today such as what it is like to receive a salary, how do you determine taxes, how much does it cost to rent a place in Vancouver/Burnaby, and what would a monthly food budget be like? Some great thinking was being done and I had a hard time getting students to stop working on their budgets! Some students even did some research by looking up information from real estate websites, BC transit, BC Hydro, and more, which was extending the lesson beyond my expectations. Good job, everybody!

More tomorrow! Have a good night. Oh, and did you know there is a shortage of coloured pencils worldwide? If you don’t know why, as our students. Wow, everyone came up with some great ideas about why they thought there might be a shortage. Congrats to Michael who came up with the answer at the end. Do you know why? And how is this related to economics and systems?