Grade 7 and 8 Curriculum

Hello everyone! Welcome back to my blog. This week in class we took a look at the grade 7 and 8 math curriculums. Our colleagues led teaching activities that encompassed the action or consolidation part of a specific lesson plan. Although there were great ideas shared in class surrounding a vast array of different topics, a simple and effective activity that I found engaging was called the game of life.

In this activity, the class was split into numerous groups. Each group represented a family, earning a different income. Associated with each family was a job title, such as a bank teller, a landlord, a grocery store cashier, etc. Right from the beginning of the activity, student engagement was vital for this activity to work effectively. One student from the banking family had to go to the front of the class, and with paper money, give each family the appropriate salary they earn ( acting as the banker).

Now with their monthly salary in their hands, the family had to budget their expenses. The teacher would explain how 30% of your monthly salary needed to go to the landlord for rent. A further 15% needed to be given to the grocery store cashier for food and drinks for your family for the month, and so on. The point of the activity is to introduce the students to percentages and decimals.

I think this activity does a great job keeping the students engaged in the classroom. The activity takes into consideration curriculum expectations, while at the same time having a practical aspect to it since students will eventually be taking care of the bills at one point in their life. For instance paying the phone bill was one aspect of the game that I enjoyed because most students have a cell phone these days, although a good percentage of them probably do not pay for it themselves. The one look for during this game, however, is classroom management. This game was extremely engaging and fun to play which meant that a lot of people were talking and the class could get rowdy quickly. The best way to keep everything organised is to break the activity into different stages. For instance, have a powerpoint with step by step instructions for each month such as calculate the expenses for the first month and give each person the amount. Then move on to the next part of the game where you choose to put a certain percent in the savings account, or something happens to the banker, etc etc.

There is so much room for creativity in this game where you can get the students to incorporate other aspects of their learning too. For instance, the teacher can make up a scenario on the powerpoint where the families are doing a math problem for some extra money, or the first family to solve the problem accurately gets to receive a payment from all the other families. This is why I loved this activity, not only are the students actively involved in their own learning, but there is so much room to alter the game to bring in other lessons they previously learnt and still keep the class engaged.