Background

During this academic year I developed the “Investing in Integers” product as an integrated assignment that combined mathematics and finance for grade 8 learners.  The school board has mandated that middle school students complete a minimum of 75 hours per year in working with the Career and Technology Foundations program of studies and this lesson counts towards the completion of those hours.  This activity requires students to apply multiple academic, life, and career skills in order to complete the task including navigating the internet, visually representing data, using technological interaction to enhance learning, and collaborating with individuals in small and large groups.

CIM

This activity/lesson is broken down into simple parts that require students to gather more information and data going further in each step which is far from traditional methods teaching.  In this activity, the learner is required to take an active role in his learning by not having him/her complete typical and routine seat work which is often done in a math class.  Students are asked to read, research, and analyze data on their assigned companies and present their findings using graphs and charts.  The culminating task requires each group to bring their data forward and come up with a schedule of trading over the year to maximize profit.  The developed lesson plan incorporates constructivism according to what is outlined by Driver and Oldham cited in an article by Michael Matthews.  The idea of using mathematics to calculate the gain or loss in an investment is new and appealing to learners and gages their interest.  The concluding question appeals to the restructuring phase constructivism of where students have to make inferences about the company’s direction in terms of stock price and make a final recommendation to the investor moving forward.

CCM

The activity provides learners the opportunity to develop a sense of community when learning by initially having them share ideas in small groups, and then with the class as a whole to find the optimal solution.  Students are  also asked to extend their thinking and make connections between what they learned in the integer unit and applying it to the idea of loss and gain in the stock market ultimately creating a brief report on their findings.

POE

Using the data gathered to create charts and graphs, helps students organize and visualize patterns in the fluctuating stock price as well as make predictions on the future performance of the stock based on previous performance.  Gathering a recent online article will provide insight as to the cause of the increase or decrease in value.

Changes

This version of the activity works much better than the version I adapted during the school year.  Initially I had students create an elaborate report with very specific details and I found that students quickly lost interest and were unmotivated to put forth all their effort in the final stages of the project.  In this version of the lesson, I also included a problem that requires the entire class to come together to develop the most profitable solution.  I feel that the next time I do this activity, using the Web to load the instructions will allow me to spend more time with specific groups as well as allow students to simply click on hyperlinks to easily navigate to sites.