Large Scale Simulation and Financial Literacy Activity
This challenging and multifaceted project will be completed, partly alone and partly with a partner. The simulation develops by stage. Each stage in meant to engage students in looking at how life and career choices blend and that opportunities and limitations are part of career selection.
This activity will take about 8-12 periods to complete. It includes, circumstances permitting, a visit to a local grocery store to determine food costs. The rationale of the activity is to have students inquire into questions about their interests/motivations, aptitudes and opportunities before them. The goal is to speculate on what would make a good "fit" from a career perspective. Then, with that knowledge in hand, students consider the financial implications through the development of a detailed income statement.
The activity has two main phases.
As tasks are assigned, links will appear here.
Tools and Resources
Phase One - Career Investigation
Worksheet #1 - this is a duplicate of the handout in class. It's a form which can be filled in, saved and printed. You will submit a completed copy once you have finished the online assessments and career related research.
Test #1 - Personality type and career connections. Are you introverted or extroverted? A feeler or a thinker? This assessment fits your personality to a career type based on a Myers-Briggs assessment. Answer the questions and record the four letter result. Investigate the career connections, choose and record.
Test #2 - click the link and choose the "Interests" quiz. This quiz connects the things that interest you to careers that have similar attributes. Then, do research on the those careers. Remember, as an option, you can use the NOC number to dig deeper.
Test #3 - this quiz assesses "abilities". Here, it's trying to assess what you may be good at doing. For example, you may want to be a sculptor, but if you have no fine motor skills, it's likely a poor choice.
Phase Two - Financial Management: Income Statement
Now that each has established a career and an income, it's time to figure out how to budget. Managing money requires many decisions and balancing wants and needs.
Worksheet #3 - this document is completed as you proceed step by step through its completion. Do so neatly and in pen. The link is to a duplicate for printing at home if needed. If working with an assigned partner, be sure to include both after tax incomes. Ask when uncertain.
Calculating your income taxes.
Tax calculator - this is a super simplified way to calculate your disposable income. As we have discussed, we don't keep all of our income. A large piece of it goes to various kinds of taxes. Those taxes pay for the many services we enjoy as citizens. One major tax type is called income taxes. For this greatly simplified tax calculation, do the following.
Accommodations - a place to live. You can choose to rent or buy. This can be a single family home, a multi-family building or condo/apartment.
Realtor.ca - use to search for properties to purchase in the Saskatoon area. Options beside Saskatoon itself are near towns such as Clavet, Warman, Martensville etc.
Kijiji Saskatoon - use this site to search for rental property
Mortgage Calculator - used to determine the monthly payment
Transportation
You may by new or used. One of the two vehicles must accommodate two children. You will calculate the monthly cost using the financial calculator. There are more options than listed here including using a manufacturer's online tools.
Autotrader.ca - choose Saskatoon, 250km
Kijiji Saskatoon - a good alternative for a used vehicle
Toyota.ca - nearly all manufacturers have page where you can price vehicles using a building tool.
Finance Costs
Finance Calculator - most people use some kind of loan to pay for their vehicle over a period of years. Use the link and follow these steps.
Insurance
Basic Insurance Costs - All vehicles in Saskatchewan require insurance. In this province, basic insurance is provided by SGI. Use this tool to locate your vehicles and their plate costs.
Menu Planning
This challenging and multifaceted project will be completed, partly alone and partly with a partner. The simulation develops by stage. Each stage in meant to engage students in looking at how life and career choices blend and that opportunities and limitations are part of career selection.
This activity will take about 8-12 periods to complete. It includes, circumstances permitting, a visit to a local grocery store to determine food costs. The rationale of the activity is to have students inquire into questions about their interests/motivations, aptitudes and opportunities before them. The goal is to speculate on what would make a good "fit" from a career perspective. Then, with that knowledge in hand, students consider the financial implications through the development of a detailed income statement.
The activity has two main phases.
- Personal assessments and career investigation - this requires several online assessments. These help "paint a picture". An important part is connecting "who I am" to "what can I do?"
- Creation of an income statement that includes line items for housing, savings, transportation and ongoing costs. Students complete a much simplified income tax calculation to determine disposable income.
As tasks are assigned, links will appear here.
Tools and Resources
- Saskatchewan Job Chart - a great guide for SK based careers. They're grouped by career family and show salaries, training and level of opportunity when fields of work. We will look at it in class.
- Job Bank Career Info - this site makes it easy to find specific info on a long list of career options. Just type in the career name. Use the NOC to help focus searches
- Career Families - this site groups careers into related categories. It might be helpful when you are trying to find similar options.
- Personality Types - a description of each of the 16 basic Myers Briggs categories. Use this page to get a quick summary. You will take a quiz to find you type below. Each type has its own a family of matching careers.
Phase One - Career Investigation
Worksheet #1 - this is a duplicate of the handout in class. It's a form which can be filled in, saved and printed. You will submit a completed copy once you have finished the online assessments and career related research.
- worksheet #1 sample - partially completed as a guide. Check in if you have questions
Test #1 - Personality type and career connections. Are you introverted or extroverted? A feeler or a thinker? This assessment fits your personality to a career type based on a Myers-Briggs assessment. Answer the questions and record the four letter result. Investigate the career connections, choose and record.
Test #2 - click the link and choose the "Interests" quiz. This quiz connects the things that interest you to careers that have similar attributes. Then, do research on the those careers. Remember, as an option, you can use the NOC number to dig deeper.
Test #3 - this quiz assesses "abilities". Here, it's trying to assess what you may be good at doing. For example, you may want to be a sculptor, but if you have no fine motor skills, it's likely a poor choice.
Phase Two - Financial Management: Income Statement
Now that each has established a career and an income, it's time to figure out how to budget. Managing money requires many decisions and balancing wants and needs.
Worksheet #3 - this document is completed as you proceed step by step through its completion. Do so neatly and in pen. The link is to a duplicate for printing at home if needed. If working with an assigned partner, be sure to include both after tax incomes. Ask when uncertain.
Calculating your income taxes.
Tax calculator - this is a super simplified way to calculate your disposable income. As we have discussed, we don't keep all of our income. A large piece of it goes to various kinds of taxes. Those taxes pay for the many services we enjoy as citizens. One major tax type is called income taxes. For this greatly simplified tax calculation, do the following.
- choose Saskatchewan for the province
- drag the "Employment income" slider to match the median income you found for your career
- Your disposable income is called your "After-tax income". Record that number on the take home pay line of the worksheet. There is a spot for you and one for your partner. The total is the household income.
Accommodations - a place to live. You can choose to rent or buy. This can be a single family home, a multi-family building or condo/apartment.
Realtor.ca - use to search for properties to purchase in the Saskatoon area. Options beside Saskatoon itself are near towns such as Clavet, Warman, Martensville etc.
Kijiji Saskatoon - use this site to search for rental property
Mortgage Calculator - used to determine the monthly payment
- Enter the purchase price of the house.
- Amortization (how low it takes to pay it off) use 25 years.
- Payment frequency = monthly.
- Under "Product" scroll down and select 5 year closed.
- Look to the right and record the monthly amount. The annual total will be that times 12.
- Property taxes, money paid to the city for services such as garbage collection, is usually in the listing. If it is not, come see me for help.
Transportation
You may by new or used. One of the two vehicles must accommodate two children. You will calculate the monthly cost using the financial calculator. There are more options than listed here including using a manufacturer's online tools.
Autotrader.ca - choose Saskatoon, 250km
Kijiji Saskatoon - a good alternative for a used vehicle
Toyota.ca - nearly all manufacturers have page where you can price vehicles using a building tool.
Finance Costs
Finance Calculator - most people use some kind of loan to pay for their vehicle over a period of years. Use the link and follow these steps.
- Input the price
- Skip down to duration. Use 60 months
- Set tax at 11%
- Use 4.5% as the interest rate. The monthly payment will be listed. Use it and the times 12 value on your income statement.
Insurance
Basic Insurance Costs - All vehicles in Saskatchewan require insurance. In this province, basic insurance is provided by SGI. Use this tool to locate your vehicles and their plate costs.
Menu Planning
PAA
Practical and Applied Arts is a generally integrated set of activities focused on skills that support or enhance learning. This year, I will focus on two broad categories.
Brickfilms
Typing Activities
Using MS Templates
- Integration of technology. Students will learn how to use cloud storage for sharing and collaboration as well specific features of Microsoft tools including Word, PowerPoint and Excel. This school year, students will be required to produce polished written compositions using Word templates, deliver individual and group presentations using PowerPoint and build graphs using Excel. I plan to do some coding as well, time permitting. It teaches algorithmic thinking and it's actually quite fun. My hope is to improve mathematical thinking as a benefit.
- Television production. This winter, all students will participate in the Telemedia program ultimately producing both an interview and television commercial at our studio. This current edition was produced by me for use by teachers in our division.
- MS Word training
- PowerPoint Mini- presentation
Brickfilms
- working with a partner, the teams will develop a short Lego film using stop motion animation. This activity has a mix composition and technical activity. Techniques will be demonstrated in class. The final assembly can be done on user owned iPads or phones, personal computers or on school supplied gear. Students will be using tripods and phones/cameras, video editing software, audio editing software and Lego to produce their projects. While the films will be short, the process will take a couple of months worth of classes to complete.
- project details
- rubric - use this to evaluate the quality of each step in the process.
- story summary doc - a duplicate of the one provided in class. Print it out if you need to a redo,
- simplified storyboard (paper version supplied in class). This is a form which you can type into. If you use the Edge browser, you can right click, save as, and then open the file later to edit. Chrome will let you save each page but you can not edit afterward. The steps will be demonstrated in class.
- Audacity tips - this is a quick helper on some basics to using Audacity. In includes a tip on how to change the pitch of your voice.
Typing Activities
Using MS Templates