Final Product
Originally created by Laurie Beaman from AISD and adapted and remixed by Sarah Morris from Nucleus Learning Network. With support from Victoria O'Dell, Mateo Clarke, Ashley Fisher, and Robert Friedman.
90 minutes total with the option to break activities into smaller chunks of time
Lesson 5 of 6 in the Budget Party Curriculum
Guide your learners as they finalize their city budgets and prepare to share their reasoning and decision-making process with others. Give your learners experience using the online Budget Party tool. Help them strengthen their critical thinking, research, presentation, and communication skills while practicing skills like evaluate and design.
Web Literacy Skills
21st Century Skills
Learning Objectives
- Learners will make informed budget decisions guided by what they believe is in the best interest of their local districts and the City of Austin.
- Learners will prioritize what they think is most important for the City of Austin to spend money on, including what is in the best interest for their local district.
- Learners will construct a budget for the City of Austin that aligns with the priorities they have laid out.
- Students will design and generate an infographic that showcases and synthesizes their budget decisions for an audience.
Audience
- Ages 14+
Materials
- Projector
- Computers or laptops with Internet access
- Google Draw or a comparable infographic creator
- See all Budget Party worksheets, broken down by lesson in this Google Drive Folder.
- Budget Party Project Directions
- Budget Party Department Research Worksheet
- Budget Party Worksheet
- Budget Opinions Worksheet
- Infographic Instruction Packet
- Fight for Funding Warm-Up Worksheet
- Finalizing Your Budget Worksheet
- Budget Party Game
- Assessment Overview
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Preparation and Introduction
Learning Progression
In this lesson, learners will:
- Finalize the creation of their city budget.
- Prepare to share their budget with an audience and to explain the reasoning behind their decisions.
- Create an infographic to visualize and explain their budget.
- Reflect on their learning.
Scaffolding and Resources
In previous lessons learners explored both individual and city budgets more generally and the Austin city budget more specifically. They applied their knoweldge and understanding to creating their own budgets. In this lesson, learners will finalize their budgets and prepare to share their budgets with an audience through an oral presentation and with an infographic.
Preparation Instructions and Facilitation Tips
You can print out the worksheets and information packets or have your learners view and complete them online depending on your technology situation.
Divide your learners into cooperative learning groups to complete the activities.
Vocabulary
- Infogrpahic
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Activities
85 minutesWarm-Up Activity 1 - 10 minutes
- Groups will re-convene to share and prioritize departments for their budget before they begin their final decisions. They will use the “Fight for Funding” warm up to rank which departments they think are most important to give funding to first, and how those departments represent the need of their local districts.
Activity 2 - 40 minutes
- Groups will log in to the Budget Party game and make decisions about each department based off of their priorities set up in their warm-up and their research from previous days.
- They will use the Finalizing Your Budget table to record their final choices.
- On this table, they will note what they increase and decrease to meet final budget standards as they play along with the game. Encourage them to start with their priorities warm-up- and use it as a place to take notations about what they are doing on the actual game. Groups should not record their final decisions until they have made all adjustments in the game and are ready to submit.
Activity 3 - 10 minutes
- Learners will discover what an infographic is based on a short video and a beginning introduction for their final product.
- You will present three infographics (taken from Brett Vogelsinger’s “Getting to Know Infographics” Edutopia lesson on infographics. Have your learners discuss the infographics and the short video as a class.
Activity 4 - 30 minutes
- Groups will begin to create their final infographic product using Google Draw, or an infographic tool of your choosing.
- Through this platform, students will be able to work on the infographic at the same time, with each creating an infographic based on the sections they were responsible for, with some sections that they will need to work on together.
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Reflection and Assessment
5 minutesClosing Reflection
- Have each group share out some of the highlights of their decision-making process and their infographic creation process.