Monday, December 1, 2014

Week 10 - Students Appreciate Learning About Credit Cards and Banking

At this point in the semester my Math for Every Day Learning class (MEL 3E) was finishing up learning about interest (finishing with compound interest) and starting to do some investigation into the large variety of credit cards that are available, comparing their use to using cash, and learning to read credit card statements. Despite this not being the most fascinating unit I can imagine being a student in they seem to really appreciate how useful the lessons and investigations are. They are seeing how it is relevant to their lives (even though most are only 16 so cannot get credit cards for awhile still) and seem to understand why it is important to learn.

When you ask them what they have learned after some of these lessons they can easily tell you about the benefits and consequences of credit card use. I keep reminding them that the important part of this semester is that they leave with some ideas of what to think about in their financial lives and hopefully will know how to find resources to help the make decisions in the future. It seems like many of the students in this class this year are hoping to leave with those things (some have since even said "this binder is going to be my bible after this course is finished").

If I get another change to teach this course I would also like to put some more focus on basic math skills. I am not sure how this would look, but I know that it would have to be something that would be motivating for them...and that would, in the end, improve their numerical confidence.

2 comments:

  1. This makes me happy to hear that this is a course in high school! Not sure if this is common nowadays but I know that when I deal with some students at the post secondary level, it troubles me that they don't even understand the basics of a credit card. This gives me hope. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unfortunately this is a course that not many students take. It is the essentials level Grade 11 course. I have been toying with the idea of creating an open level course though. If you have ideas of topics that could go into this I would appreciate the input! It can go beyond the scope of finance too and be interdisciplinary...

    ReplyDelete