Teaching Economy in 4th or 5th grade

I am not a licensed elementary teacher. Subbing this year has shown me so much about the workings of the lower grades. I have tried to piece together how teachers work with state and national standards, and it's a bit confusing. One aspect is teaching financial and economic literacy. In several classes I have been in, part of the reward/consequence system involves "payment" and "fines."

Here are the methods I have seen in action:
Method Ja
background: This is a fifth grade class with GLAD influence.

• students have jobs they get paid for. Some jobs are paid better than others (teaches that resources are allocated differently)
• Students make wallets where they keep their money.
• Students are fined for misbehavior and not turning in homework. They must take home their fine and get it signed and then pay the teacher out of their wallets. 
• Students may buy privileges from the BANKER (one of the classroom jobs) 
• examples include comfy toes, teacher chair, teacher desk, seat bump, computer time, etc.
• loans can be given and interest is collected. 

Method Je

background: This is a fourth grade class with GLAD influence. 

• students start with 5 fuzzies. They can be taken away for misbehavior.
• Fuzzies can be turned in for raffle tickets.
• raffle tickets buy objects students may need (pencils, spiral notebooks, emergency bathroom passes, etc.) or want (sharing time, extra recess, homework pass, lunch with teacher, etc.) (teaches the difference between need and want at a financial level.)
• students are responsible for their own tickets, BUT teacher has set up baggies in each cubby to hold tickets and fuzzies. 

At some point during the school year, students should be prompted to write about their experience with the fuzzies or job scenarios. This would likely be done without the students even knowing it was an assessment for economy standards. 

O2- Offer appropriate challenge in the content area.

O2.- Offer appropriate challenge in the content area. Teacher-candidates plan and /or adapt curricula that are standards driven so students develop understanding and problem-solving expertise in the content area(s) using reading, written and oral communication, and technology. In other words, teachers are responsible for exposing student to not only the standards society has determined high schoolers need to reach, but also problem-solving skills in various mediums. To give you an example, I have included a link to a different blogpost here. This blogpost gives an overview of a unit I wrote and taught about cells. In this unit, students are given information about cells, and then asked to complete several different projects and labs. This unit shows that I can give students a variety of problem-solving tasks that are aligned to standards. During this unit, students had to read about membranes, write about cheek and onion cells, and orally present a project comparing a cell to something of their choosing. Students naturally included technology into this unit through the use of PowerPoint and Prezi to present their cell projects. 


 Through this unit I noticed I have a tendency to hand-hold students through laboratory procedures. I also noticed that I was actually surprised by the sophistication of their cell analogy presentations. From reflecting on my personal behavior towards students, I have realized that students are capable of absorbing and synthesizing the information I give them, they just lack the practice adults possess. Students benefitted from this unit in several ways. They were able to practice their public and laboratory skills and learn about cells; foundations for successful students of biology. I think this was a great unit and students got a lot out of it, but in the future, I would like to work on integrating more standards into lessons in an effort to increase connections between topics.