Summary: A teacher saw the love for a book through her students interest in Harry Potter. To make a math lesson more engaging, she linked budgeting, checks and balances, and purchasing. The teacher created a list of materials students at Hogwarts needed or would want for school, along with their prices. She assigned each student a character in the book that had a budget. The problem set forth was to see how they could budget their money to get the most, get the best, get what they wanted for school.
Review: I though this was a great way to study the idea of budgeting. There are many fun ways to do this, grocery lists, allowances, shopping etc but this teacher saw an outstanding and already existing passion her students had and incorporated it. I appreciated that she did not assume each child had read the story before, and therefore created a language arts activity in the room as well, allowing each child to read aloud. Not all student had the same budget, the result of pairing each student with a Hogwarts student, which allowed them to work through their own budget. It was mentioned that students helped each other periodically, but each person still felt individuality this way. Two class periods were used to do this lesson, which I thought was appropriate. This gave enough time for a structured introduction and reflective debrief which created a full-circle experience for the students.
Citation:
Beaton, Tisha. (2004). Harry potter in the mathematics classroom. Mathematics in the Middle School, 10(1), Retrieved from http://www.nctm.org/eresources/view_media.asp?article_id=6672
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