Economics Lesson 4 Reflection

Lesson 4 focused on economics and its importance within the country France. The lesson started off with a couple of would you rather questions reflecting the topic of economics. An example question was "would you rather have a high paying job that you don't like or a job that you love that pays just enough to cover expenses?" The students used hand signals to engage and show their answers by putting up one or two fingers. Following our icebreaker teacher candidates and students went over the learning expectations that we had created as a group during lesson 1. This lesson had a lot of vocabulary words included so Miss. Karlie and I decided to create an interactive chart for the students to match pictures to it's definition. Each of the students also had these vocabulary words attached to their word rings and they were in the color yellow for easy access. Next, the students were shown a primary source from the Library Of Congress. The primary source was a picture of a gold coin from France in the year of 1360. Incorporated into this activity Miss. Karlie and I created an interactive chart based on student responses. The chart was separated into three columns: what do you see, think, and wonder about the primary source. Students gave lots of responses such as "who is the person on the coin, are there still any coins around France now, and how much was this coin worth?" The amount of student responses made it easy for us to complete. After these activities the kids definitely needed a brain break but did great in terms of staying on track despite it being Halloween and having an eventful morning. The students were given multiple colors of play-doh and were given 3 minutes of free time. Once all students finished playing with the play-doh and taking a few minutes to move around, they then answered a compelling question in their journals. The question was read aloud to them " How do human decisions and economic choices impact people's lives, varied resources, and access to goods and services for subsistence and well being?" Miss. Karlie directed them to turn and talk to a partner before beginning to write their answers. After a few minutes we directed them to stop sharing and then write their thoughts down. Each of the students wrote at least a sentence all talking about having extra products in stores and the high prices in markets. Due to time, we didn't get to have a group discussion about what everyone thought/wrote. Instead we moved onto our sorting activity where students were handed pictures and they had to place if it was a good or service on the T-chart provided. Each of the students were handed two printed out pictures of goods and services examples. They were told not to flip them over until it was their turn. This activity was a great hands-on interactive activity and the students showed great understanding by placing them all on the correct side of the T-chart. To conclude this lesson we added in a role playing activity. We gave the students a coloring page that said "Happy Halloween" in French and a Euro that had $100 value. The idea of this activity was for the students to buy stickers and markers to be able to color the page. Each time they wanted a color or Halloween sticker they would have to pay and Miss. Karlie and I would do the math to see how much money they had left. The students loved this activity and were very set on the idea of not running out of money. This activity took up a good amount of time and went until the very end. 

    The entire lesson went extremely well but I think the activity that went best was the vocabulary matching. The students stayed engaged and each student participated at least two times or more. An area of weakness in the lesson would be time management and the fact that the lesson was implemented on Halloween. The kids kept talking about their science activity that they were doing later on. As I continue to reflect on this lesson, I strongly believe that all of the students in the group met the lesson objectives. The students gave strong feedback when analyzing the primary source, identifying goods and services, and differentiating between human, natural, and capital resources. All of the students participated during the duration of each activity and made it easy for Miss. Karlie and I to fill out the charts. 

    Given the opportunity to teach this lesson to a small group of fourth-grade students I learned a lot. It is difficult to keep the students engaged and on track during a day of an event or a holiday such as Halloween. I also learned that the inclusion of hands-on activities is what keeps the lesson engaging and exciting for the students. Incorporating primary sources as a way of creating student thinking is something I learned in lesson one and have included in each of the lessons since. This experience will influence my student identity by giving me ideas for future lessons. Including visuals and hands-on learning activities that enhance student engagement proves that using them in the future will be impactful. As a future educator I will continue to include extra activities in my lesson plans in case of extra time. Lastly, brain breaks are something that I have only incorporated into these lessons but with the impact of them I will be using them in all my future lessons. 


   


















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