Standard+4

= = Home * Standard 1 * Standard 2 * Standard 3 * Standard 4 * Standard 5 * Standard 6 * Standard 7 * Standard 8 * Standard 9 * Standard 10 = = = **Standard 4** = **Teachers know how to teach.** The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies, including the use of technology, to encourage children's development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills. media type="custom" key="15051320" Planning for a Comfortable Retirement Project Personal Finance
 * Evidence **

Link to [|introductory focus presentation]



The Personal Finance course prepares students to make decisions about their financial futures. This project has students acting as financial advisors to help ‘clients’ set up a portfolio for their retirement. Students have to know what a financial advisor does and in order to make these decisions. Students need to know what questions to ask and what questions a potential client will ask. This is designed to have students find out what a financial advisor will ask them if they use one in their personal lives. Students will need to know what a financial advisor is talking about in order to converse intelligently with an advisor. This can be used as a semester-end project or cumulative evaluation.
 * Rationale **

The students enrolled in this course are high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors. This project was not taught. I think students would like to do it because they have to role play and ask questions that they will normally be asked if they were a client. The data they will gather from the client has to be interpreted and then a portfolio has to be compiled. Students will create a presentation that will have at least one financial planner in the audience. After the presentation, students will field questions from the audience.

In preparation for this project, I viewed several videos and selected one as the anticipatory set for the project. I also created a Prezi presentation that will be shown at the conclusion of the project to confirm that students fulfilled my objectives for the project. This is the first project I designed to let students guide their own education. Students have to take a problem, sort and organize the information in a wiki, examine what they have learned from previous units, draw conclusions, and, in the end, present their information to an expert in the field. They have to be critical thinkers and active users of technology to make the right decisions.

What I learned from the project is I can carefully plan a lesson to allow students to investigate the curriculum to meet objectives on their own. Giving students guidelines to follow and material to cover gives them an alternative by actively learning the material rather than having me give them the answers. They will absorb it better and be able to apply it to their lives. Students utilize several resources and instructional techniques to complete the project. Students are given the responsibility for their education as they work collaboratively. They build interpersonal skills while processing information. At the end they have to justify their choices in their presentation and follow-up discussion.

Many resources are used by both the teacher and students. I use videos, a textbook, websites (articles, investment resources), multimedia presentations, and experts in the financial field to guide students through this project. Many of the same resources are used by students, but they also have to create a wiki to track progress and organize their resources and data.
 * KSD **
 * 4.K.3 **The teacher knows how to enhance learning through the use of a wide variety of materials and technological resources (e.g. computers, audio-visual technologies, videotapes and discs, local experts, primary documents and artifacts, texts, reference books, literature, and other print resources).

Students are given a client scenario (goals, risk tolerance, income, financial obligations, etc.) that they interpret to construct a logical investment plan. They have to keep a journal of their daily progress and a list of resources in their wiki. I use the following strategies: teacher presentation of material, small group discussion, multimedia project creation, interviewing, research techniques, and self-evaluation.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">4.S.2 **<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">The teacher uses multiple teaching and learning strategies to engage students in active learning opportunities that promote the development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance capabilities and that help students assume responsibility for identifying and using learning resources.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">Allowing students the freedom to investigate and select investments based on the client criteria encourages critical thinking. Even though there is no correct answer in terms of a specific investment (i.e.-Kohl’s stock) and percentage of the portfolio, there are correct answers for the appropriate asset classes and types of securities considering the client’s criteria. Presenting their findings in a well-organized manner builds confidence for future conversations with experts they will encounter in their real lives.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">4.D.1 **<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13px;">The teacher values the development of students’ critical thinking, independent problem solving, and performance capabilities.