Financial Algebra Week 1 [and 2]

We are one week two weeks into Financial Algebra for this new term! Students seem to be excited about what we will be learning and have been actively working on stuff.

We decided to create a parent newsletter for each unit we are working on. We want the parents to become involved in the discussions with their kids, and this way they will have an idea of what is going on in the classroom, as well as what our next unit will be on. Here is Volume 1 of our newsletter. I'll update you on if it is successful or not at the end of the year!

The past few weeks we have been busy talking about some employment basics. We decided to focus the project on a career they were interested in. Students will be researching and writing a paper, giving a quick presentation, and calculating monthly pay net of Social Security and Medicare. They will use this career throughout the term and the salary will be used to calculate their net monthly income for their household budget for the final project. I'm hoping that the students are picking careers they are truly interested in and the research they are doing helps to affirm that choice! The project is due Monday night with presentations Tuesday and Wednesday, so I'll keep you posted in the next post how everything turned out. I've included the Project Instructions here for anyone interested in what we are doing.

Up next, we will be starting Banking Services. I didn't really like what we did in the Fall - it was the first unit we did and we were still trying to figure things out. I'll be spending the next few days trying to figure out how we can make this unit better. I had my student teacher work on some project ideas and I'm meeting Monday with the other teacher teaching the course (she's the "we" I always refer to). I know we can come up with some great stuff for this unit.

New Year

It's the first of the year! In 2 days, I will be back at work and getting ready to the new term.

I'm excited to be teaching 2 sections of Financial Algebra again - I've learned so much the first time around and already have so many thoughts and ideas on how to make it better for the second time. That being said, I'm also finding that I am already overwhelming myself with wanting to create new lessons and repackaging old lessons. The past two weeks, I've spent many hours working on a HyperDoc to familiarize students with Google Suite (suited for High School students) and repackaging a career introduction (skills, interests, and abilities assessments). I think that I have finally got them completed! I'm still working on a document to go into Sheets (since we are doing finance, we use it often and I found the first time around that students had no experience with the application). And, I need to still figure out the details of our first project - career research. We did a different project for this unit, but with the additional time we have, we thought it would be better to really have students research the career they are thinking about since we will use it throughout the year. I'm hoping that I will be able to get them finished by Tuesday, but it isn't looking promising since the other 2 took so long for me to "perfect."

More time than I anticipated has been spent working on a strategy session presentation I volunteered to give. Back in November, I attended SDCUE and a session on HyperDocs. I had heard about them, but I wanted a better understanding. I had implemented a few in my class, and really enjoy the freedom it gives both myself and the students. So, I'm presenting a session about HyperDocs to any teacher that wishes to find out more! I finished my slide deck and thought that I was ready to go. But then I finished reading The HyperDoc Handbook: Digital Lesson Design Using Google Apps by Lisa Highfill, Kelly Hilton, and Sarah Landis. I felt I could make it better. I thought, if I'm giving a presentation about HyperDocs, wouldn't it be best to example it with them? So I created a Form that could go with the session. I gave opportunities for participants to Explore, Apply, and Reflect. I ask participants to explore already made hyperdocs for their content area. Then I ask for them to include the hyperlink. I will have them apply by really thinking about a lesson they plan to do this spring that maybe they could repackage. Finally, they will reflect on the idea of HyperDocs. In having participants search and include a link to a HyperDoc, I wanted to make sure that information was available for teachers to access, so I created a new Sheet and used the ImportRange function so that only those responses from the form would be visible to anyone that has the link. It's simple, but I'm pretty impressed with myself in pushing this further. My hope is that my colleagues will push themselves so that we all can push the students to achieve more!

Now that I have procrastinated an additional half-hour on the lessons I still need to work on, my resolution for this Spring Term is to Blog at least once a week with some of the resources we are using for Financial Algebra. I think we are doing some awesome stuff, and while we haven't created everything ourselves, it would still be good for me to share what we are doing.

Credit Card Minimum

One of my favorite projects so far in Financial Algebra has been on Credit Cards. I had found a Personal Finance Project Resource Book that was created through the Connecticut State Department of Education. The project is on "Paying the Minimum" and essentially how long it will take to pay off a credit card if you are only to pay the minimum amount. I stress with the Students that this is IF you do not charge anything else onto the card (which most people do not do). I felt it was pretty eye-opening to them. I modified a few things from the original project and expected this from the students. I will probably change a few things for the next time around (up the minimum payment) - I felt a little rushed putting it together with midterms right around the corner. I also was finding that it was really important to be able to provide an example.

Below are some pictures of a few of the projects that were turned in. I love that students are getting experience with Sheets and learning how to use it to their advantage. This is the second project they have had in which they used Sheets and had to link it to the project with a QR code!!

      

Life isn't work

Lately, my husband has been hassling me a bit because whenever I'm home (after we put our daughter to bed), I'm always working. With 2 new classes, prepping a course for the team, and department chair duties, there never seems to be enough time during my work day to get things done. So I use the last few hours of the day to try to power through things. I know I should prioritize my family time more (I've gotten better about not doing so much work on the weekends!), but it's so difficult feeling the crazy pressure and time frames of a 4x4.

Yesterday afternoon I got a call from a colleague - I had to silence it as I was finishing up planning with another teacher. At 10 o'clock in the evening, I got a text stating that a colleague, who retired just over a year ago, had a massive heart attack. They were in the hospital, but as of that evening hadn't regained consciousness. I'm hoping to find out more details today since they were going to go visit.

At this point, I'm just baffled. I'm totally bummed about this news. It really puts life into perspective and brings back to the forefront what's most important. For me, that's not my work. I love what I do and I love working with students and teaching them about life. But that can't come at the expense of my life and my family.  So, it's going to be a crazy next 9 weeks, but I've got to stop bringing so much work home (both physically and mentally) and start focusing more on my family, since they truly are what matter the most to me!

Loan Amortization

On the heels of starting the next Financial Algebra chapter on Automobile Ownership, I decided to do a little research into loan amortization schedules. This lesson serves two purposes:

1. Teaching the kids the math and formulas on how loan payments are split between principal and interest, and
2. Showing the students how to use Sheets/Excel to do the math for you

I feel both of these will be valuable skills that they should know. I find too often that students do not know all the advantages of Excel, so if I can show them just a few I'll call that a win!

So,  as I was starting to work the math behind the lesson, I began with the Monthly Payment Formula:

I had to check if this was the monthly payment the loan calculator gave; it was! Next, I started a Google Sheet to begin work for the amortization schedule. Interest was calculated by taking the balance and multiplying it by the "monthly" rate (the rate given is the annual percentage rate so you have to divide that by 12). Principal is found by subtracting the interest from the monthly payment and the balance by taking the previous balance and subtracting that payments principal. So easy to do once you tell Sheets what to do - first payment was done and then you drag the rest down and watch the magic happen!!

I also remembered from my business classes being able to set a formula in Excel to find the payment (not having to input the crazy thing above). So, I used that also to see if it worked - it does. Except that it gave the answer as a negative?? Not sure why, but I'll look into that when I have more time. 

I'm excited for the opportunity to share all this with my class next week. I hope they find this unit enjoyable!!