Employability Skills
Communicate and comprehend written and verbal thoughts, ideas, directions, and information relative to educational and occupational settings.
Select and utilize appropriate technology in the design and implementation of teacher-approved projects relevant to occupations and/or higher educational settings.
Evaluate the following career skills as they relate to employment:
Communication
Organization
Decision making
Goal setting
Resources allocation
Demonstrate teamwork and leadership skills that include student participation in real world applications of career and technical education skills.

Mathematics
Problem Solving:
Learn mathematics through problem solving, inquiry, and discovery. Solve problems that arise in mathematics and in other contexts.
Open-ended problems
Non-routine problems
Problems with multiple solutions
Problems that can be solved in several ways
Select and apply a variety of appropriate problem-solving strategies to solve problems. Pose problems of various types and levels of difficulty.
Monitor progress and reflect on the process of their problem solving activity.
Communication
Use communication to organize and clarify mathematical thinking.
Reading and writing, Discussion, listening, and questioning
Communicate their mathematical thinking coherently and clearly to peers, teachers, and others, both orally and in writing.
Analyze and evaluate the mathematical thinking and strategies of others.
Use the language of mathematics to express mathematical ideas precisely.
Technology
Use technology to gather, analyze, and communicate mathematical information.
Use computer spreadsheets, software, and graphing utilities to organize and display quantitative information.
Use graphing calculators and computer software to investigate properties of functions and their graphs.
Use calculators as problem-solving tools (e.g., to validate solutions).
 

9.1 Career and Technical Education
A. Career Awareness/Preparation
B. Employability Skills
9.2 Career Education and Consumer, Family and Life Skills
A. Critical Thinking
B. Self Management
C. Interpersonal Communication
E. Consumer and Personal Finance
4.5 Mathematics
A. Problem Solving
B. Communication
D. Reasoning
E. Representation
F. Technology

Sequence of Activities

I. Individual Activities

• Read Occupation Choice, and record salary on the Individual Budget.

• Read Budget Basic Guide

• Calculate Payroll Deductions

• Read Pie Chart and calculate your % of expenses

• Complete Individual Budget

II. Group Activities

• Using the Individual Budget, calculate the amount of money the group has to spend on joint Housing, Transportation, Banking, and Household Expenses

• Discussion of issues related to topics and criteria for research: where to live, kind of transportation, banking and food, TV and phone

III. Individual Activities

• Directed internet research, evaluate according to criteria, decision-making, record information

IV. Group Activities

• Present information to team

• Discussion

• Evaluation and Decision making

• Revise Group Budget

• Create presentation to the class for evaluation

• Recall occupation choice and salary
• Cite the Budget Guide
• Collect and record information from the internet

Understand

• Interpret information from Budget Basic Guide
• Estimate the amount of money the group needs for each category in the group budget
• Discuss the issues related to topics of research for each role
• Interpret information from research
• Summarize and present options to the team for each role

Apply

• Calculate payroll and percentage of net income according to the Pie Chart
• Modify expenses for Housing, Transportation, Banking and Household
• Examine and discuss the options for Group Budget

Analyze

• Break down the Individual budget into component parts and organize monthly salary allocations
• Distinguish and see patterns in overspending

Evaluate

• Make choices for expenses
• Assess criteria for internet research
• Judge and devise recommendations for presentation to the group
• Evaluate and decide which options to choose as a team

Create

• Formulate an individual budget
• Develop a plan for research
• Rewrite the budget as agreed
• Create a PowerPoint presentation for you class

Verbal/Linguistic: Discuss group budget, issues related to topics and criteria for research

Visual/Spatial: Visualize apartments, cars, transportation options, imagine household necessities, use of internet sites and webquest

Intrapersonal: Reflect on personal choices and values for money allocation on individual budget

Interpersonal: Listen and understand the other team members point of view and research information

Logical/Mathematical: Calculate payroll deductions, interpret pie chart, calculate %, balance individual and group budget, checking, saving account, and credit card debt and payment schedules, income and expenses

Existential: Seeing themselves in a possible future context, in a "grown-up" world working at an occupation with rights and responsibilities.

• Concrete Sequential
  Structured internet research links provided in the Roles, gathering facts and details, recording information on checklists, individual responsibilities and basing decisions on reasoning
• Abstract Sequential
  Analyze budgets into parts and use logic and mathematics to find solutions, evaluation of results, presenting results and defending choices, decision making process
• Concrete Random
  Investigate options in the roles, explore possible solutions, inventing outcomes sharing their ideas in group, living on their own concept which directly affects their life
• Abstract Random
  Imaginative and emotional focus on topics: home, transportation, money and future household , use of a variety of resources, group work and presentation to the team and class

Sense & Meaning
Sense
Our students have lived under their parent’s roof for at least the last seventeen years.  They have seen and heard the typical financial concerns of their parents, relatives and teachers.  In addition they have been exposed to numerous social and economic conditions that have become part of their perceived world view.  They come to class with some understanding of the freedom that money will give them. They have been enrolled in a public or private school setting for the majority of those years. They have been taught the simple and the complex in an effort to prepare them to think and make decisions, while building upon previous facts and circumstances and applying them to their lives.  Subliminal pressures of society, peers, entertainment and education are preparing them to “leave the nest”.
Meaning
The natural inclination of our human mind is to wonder and contemplate our own future, and to dream of a perfect life to come.  This exciting project throws lighter fluid on a glowing ember of desire to go out and explore, to test all of the facts, ideas and rules that have regulated these young people until the eleventh grade.  The research that each student uses will cause them to reflect upon what they have heard and been taught both at home and in the classroom (if by no other idea than they can’t afford a lot of what they want).  The comparison and similarity of real life expenditures of a rapidly depleting paycheck, will ring back in their ears the old quotes of; “You think money grows on trees!”  As the student meets together with his or her team, they will find that they have to justify and defend their own perceived way that things should be; and thoughtfully guide and direct their teammates and themselves with clear application of the researched information to dispute or justify many of the standards they have lived with in those seventeen years. 

(I.) Individual Activities in this webquest introduce the budget through reading information in the guide. In the next Tasks they interact and apply the information using calculations and the completion of an Individual Budget. In the II. Group Activities the students transfer what they learned in making an individual budget to the discussion of  a Group Budget and evaluate the needs of the Team. They further discuss the budget and decide on criteria for research. (Long term storage is activated as it is brought into working memory providing rehearsal for the information). As they revisit the concepts during III . Individual Activities while using the internet for directed research they are bringing new learning which they then summarize and then share with the Team during the  IV. Group Activities where it is revisited during discussion, evaluation and decision making. Throughout the webquest the students build networks of concepts with sense and meaning.
 

Closure is achieved by the Team as they determine how to organize and present the Budget information to the class as a group when they create a PowerPoint.