Inquiry Project- Chelsea Hamilton and Brooke Swope

Created Feb. 7, 2024 by Chelsea Hamilton

PBL TEMPLATE

Team member

Name: Brooke Swope

Name: Chelsea Hamilton

Topic: Money

Part 1: Driving question:

What are your three initial driving questions?

1. How would you spend your money if you were wealthy?
2. How do you think our government should use money in order to create a better society?
3. What does it mean to be rich?

How would you budget your money if you were wealthy?

1st grade
Standard 1.M.3 - Find the value of a collection of pennies, nickels, and dimes.
For this project, the teacher would provide a list of occupations for students to choose from - all occupations would center around the same annual salary. Students would choose a job, and would then choose a house, a car, and other things based off of a list that the teacher would also provide. The lists will display pictures as well as prices of homes and the cars. After they chose these things, they would factor in yearly prices for bills. At the end of the project, students would create a poster to display their findings. This project would focus on teaching students how to budget money, but in a fun and engaging way. This project should take no longer than 3 days.

Does the DQ warrant in-depth study? With this project, students would choose a career and then do research on that career to see what daily life would be like to see if they would actually want to do that everyday for an occupation. After that, students would pick a house and car. Students could research on what they could use “extra” money for, if they were a wealthy adult. They might choose to donate money to charities, open a business, or invest in stocks.
Is the DQ an authentic and relevant issue/problem for my students? This DQ is a relevant issue because money is something that everyone needs to live off of. Therefore, students are gaining a sense of real-life problems and how they might come across these problems in the future.
Is there more than one plausible solution to the DQ? Every student will have different solutions. They all will not have the same occupation, house or car. Many of the students will also choose to use their money in different ways, but it is ultimately up to the students.
Does the DQ provide opportunities for students to evaluate, analyze, present, and defend their solutions? This question will have the students researching careers, evaluating and analyzing their spending, they then will present on a poster how they chose to spend their money and why they picked the occupation that they did. Students will have to defend their reasoning because some students might debate that money could have been used in a more efficient way.

Part2: Grabber

The students will watch this video to learn the difference between needs and wants. http://www.watchknowlearn.org/Video.aspx?VideoID=44738

Why do you think this grabber is beneficial and how it align with your driving question?

Does the story, article, video, announcement, role play, or other resource hook the learner into asking more questions about the topic? This video shows the difference between needs and wants when spending money. Students will learn that a need is a necessity, like food, water, or shelter and they will learn that a want is not a necessity, such as a game, candy bar, or bike.
Does the grabber capitalize on novelty and / or high emotion situations? This grabber is presenting real life situations, so I hope the students take it seriously and learn from it. Students will learn ways to spend their money in better and more efficient ways.
Does the grabber establish authenticity & relevance? This grabber is short and gets to the point. Hopefully the students can learn a little from this, so they make good choices for their activity. This video is relevant to their project because by watching this, they can decide what might be better options to spend their money on, such as donating to a charity rather than buy 6 cars.
Make sure to explain in detail how this grabber would be used. First the students will sit and watch the video. After watching the video they should know the difference between needs and wants, and be able to make smart choices for their activity. Based on the video, students will choose how they will spend their annual salary and hopefully they will have learned what things are better to spend their money on than others.

1) Activity 1

What is your first activity? The project is called “Wealthy Budgeting.” For the first activity, students will create a poster displaying their final findings from the project. After choosing from lists of careers who bring in a large annual salary, a list of houses, and a list of cars, the students would budget their money and choose what they would do with the excess. They would then create a poster and display what they chose and explain why. They would also explain what they chose to do with their extra money. Students would work on this project individually and information would be presented to students at the start of the activity. However, the students would have to do research on their own to find how they would choose to spend their money - such as donating, saving, or investing. This project would go along with their lesson in learning the value of coins and money. It would help them to gain an understanding of the value of money but in a fun and real-life situational way.

How is the activity authentic? This activity is authentic to student’s learning because they are learning, in a fun way, how they would need to use money in the future. Students will also realize how they might handle real-life problems in the future as well.
Does the activity provide students with the opportunity to present and defend problem solution? Students will present and defend their choices and solutions they come to find - such as why they chose a certain career, house, car, and what to do with their extra money. Not every students will have the same choices so students will explain why they wanted to choose this. Other students might find that the money could have been used in a more efficient way so the students will have to defend why they felt compelled to choose this certain item or solution.
Does the activity require student collaboration? Students would work individually on this project, however they can choose to ask for input from other students and the teachers.
How will I judge what students have learned from the activity?

Standards