On 9th January, we ran our first workshop of 2015 in Ysgol Maesydderwen, where we administered a Finance for Life workshop for 96 year nine pupils.
Our Finance for Life workshop aims to prove to students that the maths skills they learn in school are vital to them being employed when they leave school and start searching for jobs.
The year nine pupils were split up into groups and worked their way around four workshops; each workstation aimed to show pupils how maths is used in everyday life, and in every job role.
Our first workshop considered payslips. Pupils were taught how to fill in payslips, and how to calculate different wages etc.,
The second workshop was titled ‘Mobile Phone Contracts’, where year nine pupils were given this scenario to consider:
‘You work part- time job with EE as a Sales Assistant. Your job is to select the correct package for customers. For example: the cheapest one based on their usage (texts and calls.) You have 9 customers and you need to tell them which package is the best for their needs.’
In groups of six, the pupils had to work out how much each of the four contracts would cost the customer, and which one would be the cheapest. Students worked together and thrived in this task; they learnt how mobile phone contracts work, and how important it was to work out the cheapest deal to save money. Several students were keen to complete the extension task of working out whether it was cheaper to pay more for a mobile at the shop and less on their monthly contract, or vice versa.
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The year nine pupils were split up into groups and worked their way around four workshops; each workstation aimed to show pupils how maths is used in everyday life, and in every job role.
Our first workshop considered payslips. Pupils were taught how to fill in payslips, and how to calculate different wages etc.,
The second workshop was titled ‘Mobile Phone Contracts’, where year nine pupils were given this scenario to consider:
‘You work part- time job with EE as a Sales Assistant. Your job is to select the correct package for customers. For example: the cheapest one based on their usage (texts and calls.) You have 9 customers and you need to tell them which package is the best for their needs.’
In groups of six, the pupils had to work out how much each of the four contracts would cost the customer, and which one would be the cheapest. Students worked together and thrived in this task; they learnt how mobile phone contracts work, and how important it was to work out the cheapest deal to save money. Several students were keen to complete the extension task of working out whether it was cheaper to pay more for a mobile at the shop and less on their monthly contract, or vice versa.
Our third workshop was called 'Shopping Budget', where pupils were given a scenario where they were given a wage and working hours, and had to work out their weekly pay then their tax and National Insurance deductions. In addition to this, pupils also had to calculate how much money they had to live on after they deducted living costs, hobbies, food costs etc.,
Pupils were then given cards with various foods on with, students had to select what foods they could afford within their budget, which is a skill which we believe is used weekly, if not daily; it is a maths skill that pupils will need to calculate as adults.
Lastly, pupils worked through our Tax workshop, pupils were asked the question-
where does your tax really go? In this activity, the pupils were shown an example of a tax break down, and had to debate in groups, if they thought that their tax was correct, and if it was morally correct for their tax to be calculated using certain methods.
We believe the workshop was very successful, and we thoroughly enjoyed working with Ysgol Maesydderwen pupils to develop their maths skills, and to ultimately prove that maths is needed in everyone's life. We can't wait to work with you all in the future on our other workshops!
We hope you've enjoyed this blog post.
Remember you can follow our journey supporting the What you say COUNTS! scheme by following us on Twitter- @SteamStories, and by liking us on Facebook- Facebook.com/SteamPoweredStories.
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