In this unit students develop understanding of the financial challenges faced by superannuitants in their local community. As part of this, they research the community resources and services that are available to support the older citizens and implement a (short term) programme of help for at least one older community member.
In exploring matters of financial literacy, particularly balance sheets and budgets, students apply a range of additive and multiplicative strategies. Financial calculations require them to apply decimal and place value understanding. As they work with negative balances, they apply their integer knowledge.
At this level students should be able to pose investigative questions that they want to explore, consider the appropriate data they need to collect, and gather and sort the data in order to develop an answer to their question. They need to be able to identify the variables that are relevant to their investigative question and recognise the importance of developing survey questions that will answer this.
As they sort their multivariate data, students may ask additional investigative questions of the data, for example; what are the ages of the group of super annuitants, what community services are used by the super annuitant group, are men more likely to use the Meals-on-Wheels service than women, and are younger ‘pensioners’ better informed about the services that are available to them than those who are older? Students should recognise that when variables are considered together, a more complex and interesting picture, related to the investigation and its group, can be revealed.
In designing their investigation, the data collection method, and the sorting and display of data, students should consider matters such as purpose, practical implementation, manageability, surveying, data safety including ethics, and how technology can be used effectively in their investigation. Students should be supported to use the most appropriate display to use for a particular purpose, to use technology to create displays, and to find patterns and relationships in the data, including differences and similarities between distributions.
The Level 4 Statistics units Travel to school and How much bullying? provide supporting ideas for developing investigative questions, ethics and developing survey questions.
Associated Achievement Objectives
Health and Physical Education
Healthy Communities and Environments
The learning opportunities in this unit can be differentiated by providing or removing support to students and by varying the task requirements. Ways to support students include:
This integrated unit makes connections to health and physical education and is an example of a topic of interest. However, this context can be adapted to suit the interests and experiences of your students. Other topics of interest related to health and physical education could be used in a similar manner, for example, gender equity. This unit could also be reframed in relation to other specific groups of people that are relevant to your students. Members of your local community might also be able to visit your class and influence the unit with valuable knowledge and perspective.
Te reo Māori kupu such as kauwhata (graph), the names for specific types of graphs, mahere pūtea (budget), moni whiwhi (income), taurangi (variable), tirohanga tauanga (statistical survey, survey), raraunga matatini (multivariate data), raraunga matatahi (univariate data), kohikohi raraunga (data collection), and whakaari raraunga (data display) could be introduced in this unit and used throughout other mathematical learning.
Learning activities
Whilst this unit is presented as sequence of five sessions, more sessions than this may be required. It is also expected that any session may extend beyond one teaching period.
Session 1
This session focuses on developing students’ understanding of superannuation and the financial challenges faced by some older members in their community.
SLO:
Activity 1
Activity 2
Make available to student pairs a copy of Copymaster 1.
Note: the values provided in the resource were up-to-date at the time of creation. Since then, incomes and expenses will have changed. You should decide whether you will work with the provided data, as an example of how to budget, acknowledging that the costs and incomes have changed, or if you want to create new data that reflects current costs and incomes.
Activity 3
Activity 4
Make available to each student a copy of Copymaster 2 (Pita’s bank statement).
Session 2
This session is about developing student understanding of the impact of financial constraints on the day-to-day life of a super annuitant. It involves planning to visit a local older resident.
SLO:
Activity 1
Write Budget on the class chart. Ask who has managed a budget of their own.
Together, brainstorm and record what the students already know about budgets. Key ideas to elicit from the students:
Activity 2
Activity 3
Activity 4
Session 3
This session is about planning an investigation and the data gathering process.
Prior to this session, deliver introductory information to older citizens.
SLOs:
Activity 1
Activity 2
Suggested sources:
Activity 3
Session 4
This session is about students visiting survey participants, getting to know their stories and gathering data to answer the investigation question.
SLOs:
Prior to this session, the date, visit time and specific participants will have been identified, agreed upon, and arrangements will have been made.
Activity 1
Agree on visit protocols, including considering appropriate koha, reminder about ethics and data safety for the participants.
Activity 2
Review the purposes of the survey and visit, and agree on a consistent format for each visit:
The format should be respectful and safe for the participants.
Activity 3
Remind students to make a suitable time for a return visit to spend time with the older person and undertake a/another helpful task.
Activity 4
Have students complete their visits and gather survey data.
Session 5
This session is about students sorting and displaying data, looking for patterns, variations, relationships, and trends and communicating findings.
Prior to the session make copies of all survey results for each student pair.
SLOs:
Activity 1
Have students work in pairs to sort their data, and record, display, and write findings. If appropriate, the recording, displaying, and writing could be done by individuals (as opposed to pairs of students). Support students to use appropriate graphing tools (e.g. a paper template, graphing software). You might choose to introduce two types of graph to the class, for all to use. Alternatively, your students might have sufficient knowledge and experience to choose their own graph types, with less support from the teacher.
Activity 2
Activity 3
Activity 4
Conclude by reflecting on the statement: “It takes a village to care for our elderly citizens”.
Plan practical details of completing helpful tasks and possible ongoing contact with survey group members.
Dear parents and whānau,
In mathematics and health we have been finding out about older people in our community, about superannuation, about some of the challenges our older community members face, and about the services and resources that are available to support them.
Your child and a classmate have visited and spent time with a local older resident. Ask your child about their experience, about what they have learned and about how they helped that person.
Thank you.
Printed from https://nzmaths.co.nz/resource/it-takes-village at 8:37am on the 28th April 2024