Big Idea:

Coding: Understanding and creating or modifying spreadsheets to manage a budget

Expectations:

Algebra:

• C3. solve problems and create computational representations of mathematical situations using coding concepts and skills

  • C3.1. solve problems and create computational representations of mathematical situations by writing and executing code, including code that involves conditional statements and other control structures

Financial Literacy:

• F1.demonstrate the knowledge and skills needed to make informed financial decisions

  • F1.3. design sample basic budgets to manage finances for various earning and spending scenarios

Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) Skills in Mathematics and the Mathematical Processes

• A1. Throughout this grade, in order to promote a positive identity as a math learner, to foster well-being and the ability to learn, build resilience, and thrive, students will apply, to the best of their ability, a variety of social-emotional learning skills to support their use of the mathematical processes and their learning in connection with the expectations in the other five strands of the mathematics curriculum.

In this lesson, to the best of their ability, students will learn to recognize sources of stress and cope with challenges, and to think critically and creatively as they apply the mathematical processes problem solving (develop, select, and apply problem-solving strategies and representing (select from and create a variety of representations of mathematical ideas (e.g., representations involving physical models, pictures, numbers, variables, graphs), and apply them to solve problems), so they can work through challenging math problems, understanding that their resourcefulness in using various strategies to respond to stress is helping them build personal resilience, and so they can make connections between math and everyday contexts to help them make informed judgements and decisions.

Materials

• Teacher access to projector and computer for sharing spreadsheets

• Student access to computers to modify spreadsheets

Understanding spreadsheets or Understanding spreadsheets .pdf

Coding the spreadsheet or Coding the spreadsheet.pdf

Scaffolded spreadsheet investigation instructions or Scaffolded spreadsheet investigation instructions.pdf

Prior Learning

Students should have discussed budgets and basic financial planning.They should have decided on a purpose for saving/ spending money.

See this lesson: Grade 5 - Financial Literacy - Budgeting and Financial Goal setting

Consolidate by making an anchor chart of commands for different math operations.

To help consolidate, you can refer to the “Coding the spreadsheet” images on the PDF below. (This will also tell students where to find these commands.)

Coding the spreadsheet

Opportunities for Differentiation

• Number line to support understanding of positive and negative numbers, earning and spending money

• Money manipulatives to keep track of earning and spending money

• Some students may benefit from scaffolded exploration rather than an open investigation.

See this sheet for ideas

Scaffolded spreadsheet investigation instructions OR Scaffolded spreadsheet investigation instructions.pdf

• Some students may benefit from having hard copies of instructions/ examples

Opportunities for Assessment:

Part 1 Diagnostic assessment

• Do students recognize how the spreadsheet changes and how it affects the choices they might be able to make?

Formative assessment

• Can students understand the purpose or usefulness of a budget?

• Can they suggest new possible actions (i.e. how to reduce expenditures and increase earnings)

Part 2

Formative Assessment

• Assess students’ abilities to find and record the coding on the sheet. Can they communicate how the coding works?

Use the spreadsheet to find out how to code the spreadsheet to keep track of earning and spending.

Grade 5 budget lesson spreadsheet

Part 3: Teacher: Now it is your chance to alter something about the spreadsheet to see how it affects the budget.

Students can add other earning categories, or add to or delete from the list of planned purchases. Then they need to alter the code to make sure all the new data is included in the spreadsheet calculations.

Note: This can serve as an opportunity for summative assessment to assess whether students are understanding how the coding explored in the last lesson works.

This will address the expectation:

C4. apply the process of mathematical modelling to represent, analyse, make predictions, and provide insight into real-life situations

Students will need to create mathematical models that represent the operations/ calculations they need for their spreadsheet.