Video Recording Link:

https://youtu.be/tHJD1gdhtWA

Summary of Unit Implementation:

Each lesson activity in my unit “Understanding Financials” went as planned for the

most part. On Monday day one of the unit called “Financial Vocabulary” students were

expected to predict what each vocabulary word is in a whole group discussion before

filling a graphic organizer on their own. Instead of having students fill out the graphic

organizer on their own I helped students due to our extended length in discussion by

provided students with the definitions instead of having them look it up in a dictionary to

save time and make sure they had the correct definition. I also allowed students to write

half the words (10 words) in sentences because we ran out of time. Although the

execution did not go as planned I realized that students really benefited from learning the

vocabulary words that went along with financial literacy.

On Tuesday day 2 of the unit, lesson “Budget and Choices” was executed almost

perfectly. This is also the day I videoed the first ten minutes of my lesson. The only

problem I faced during this lesson was being able to play the video I had planned. I

already had the video pulled up before hand to make it easy to play but for some reason

the video would not play when I opened the laptop. Luckily after commercials and little

time pasted the video was able to play which was a great benefit to my lesson. Being able

to access student’s prior knowledge and then being able to discuss what happened in the

video helped students understanding the idea of budgeting and choices.

Wednesday day 3 students learned about “Opportunity Cost & Scarcity” through a

video, discussion, and a worksheet. When executing this lesson I believed students had
grasped the idea of opportunity cost, various buying choices, and scarcity way quicker

than I expected students to. Although when I went back and graded the worksheet that

went along with the lesson students really struggled to understand that opportunity cost

was what students were missing out on when making a decision. Due to grading these

directly after the lesson I was able to re-explain the idea on Thursday making it so

students had a better understanding of the idea after I gave them two scenarios and had

them explain to me what opportunity cost was.

On Thursday day 4, I planned to have students create posters based upon the idea of

fundraising money for a new class hamster and all the supplies they would need. This

lesson is called “Goods and Services Fundraisers” which we discussed after watching a

video about it. When creating this plan I thought all students would choose one item to

sell as a good or service, which I decided would then make it easy for them to find out

how much of it they would need to sell. Instead students chose ideas like bake sale or

garage sale where there would be multiple items sold for different prices. This made it

difficult for students to calculate how many items they would need to sell in order to raise

enough money. For these students I had to assist them more and actually extend this

lesson to a two-day lesson instead one, extending it to Friday day 5 and making the

lesson longer on Friday. Although students spent more time on it, students came up with

great ideas for how we could raise money for another hamster and some students really

want to try doing their fundraiser outside of school which we discussed while presenting

before taking the summative assessment on day 5.

Throughout these lessons I used multiple engagement strategies. In almost all

lessons I used students prior knowledge to discussion financial literacy, which allowed
students to freely discuss what they understood and how it related to their life. I also used

group discussions on most days to help students stay active in the conversation to hold

engagement. Allowing students to work in ability level groups also helped students

become engaged in the lesson because they were able to work together with someone

their level. Each of these strategies and many others were used and a great benefit to each

lesson.

Summary of Student Learning:

My initial perception and observation of students overall learning during the unit

“Understanding Financials” surprised me. Many students did not have any idea of what

goods, services, needs, wants, budgeting, or scarcity was. During each lesson I observed

each students progress and by the end of the unit students were able to explain what each

word was and identify each in a scenario when asked. Students learning grew from day 1

to day 5.

When students were working on the worksheet called “S.M.A.R.T. Budgeting” a

student asked me a question that forced myself to rethink my answer to the key. On the

worksheet students were identifying if various goods were a “need” or a “want.” One of

the items was school supplies and a student asked, “can’t school supplies be both a need

and a want depending upon the situation because you may need school supplies like a

pencil but not need expensive markers?” This question really made me rethink my

answer key into saying both are correct because it really depends upon the situation. This

changed my response and actually probed a discussion with the whole class about how a

certain situation can change any good to a need instead of a want depending upon the

context. This question improved student learning because we were able to have a deeper
conversation about the idea then before. This student improved not only his but the whole

classes learning and progress.

Reflection of Video Recording:

After re-watching the video of my teaching performance on day 2 lesson “Budget

and Choices” I believe that I engaged the students greatly. With the use of prior

knowledge, technology, and questioning students were engaged throughout the lesson

and wanting to discuss what they already knew or were learning. The one thing that I

would like to improve in my future teaching is moving around the classroom when

talking to students instead of staying stationary at the front of the room. One thing I

thought I did well was creating the lesson with multiple levels to both assess and engage

students. Overall I believe the video recording was a great depiction of my teaching

abilities.