Game of Life Hits Home

By the 6^th grade, children’s dreams of growing up to be a cowboy or ballerina morph into engineer, interior designer, doctor. They are beginning to take stock of life choices and the true cost of living. While students dream more realistically of their adult selves, they are learning skills in school to answer life’s challenges. This spring, Math Teacher Lee Bissett has students playing “The Game of Life,” a unit that challenges them to chart out their financial futures through lessons on taxes and budgeting.

 

Sixth graders first created budgets based on a chosen profession. They were tasked with computing and calculating percentages, comparing tax rates, and dividing yearly salary and taxes into monthly costs. “Many of them were shocked that before they even had a chance to spend their income, an average of 20% was already dedicated to taxes,” reports Lee.

 

Other realizations set in for the students as they made lifestyle choices: Drive or walk to work? Live alone or with roommates? They continued calculating their costs of living and created pie charts to represent how these decisions factored into their take-home pay.

 

Sections of the pie charts represented expenses and percentages of their total income. When students create and analyze pie charts, “a concept as simple as a percent takes on an entirely new meaning,” says Lee. He observed the students’ realization that $15.23 is 15.23% of every $100 of income. “In this context, these essential understandings and skills are much more likely to be retained as they have been used to solve meaningful problems,” he explains.

 

Weaving math concepts into skill-based lessons has another pay-off. As students acquire new knowledge and skills, curiosity drives conversation with family and each other. Lee observes, “I find that students are more appreciative of what their families do and are now equipped with a deeper understanding of what it means to be an adult,” And, with a clearer sense of the possibilities and choices in their own financial futures, students gain a wider view of the financial challenges people across society face. Lee reflects: “Having 'run the numbers' themselves, students are better able to articulate some of the ways in which socioeconomic status can dramatically affect the lives that people live.”