Banqer

Monopoly, Probability & Financial Literacy

My class have spent one maths lesson a week learning about Financial Literacy, during the last 10 weeks. I only see these students 4 times a week and they really enjoy what they are learning.We have so far covered saving, interest, Kiwisaver, tax and briefly looked at redundancy.My students were tasked with selecting any country from around the world to compare it's income tax with New Zealand's, and we learnt some really cool stuff.Yesterday we spent an hour learning about probability. Probability of rolling one die, then probability of rolling two dice, and how these probabilities changed. We played Greedy Pig and talked about the concept of gambling with probability.Enter Monopoly. This morning we set up three games of Monopoly, and set the focus on making sound financial decisions with our money, and looking at the experimental probability of rolling two dice, compared to the theoretical probability. My students quickly realised that they do not match, and some pointed out the probability of rolling doubles, especially when they need to get out of jail.I heard some really awesome comments:"Wow! That's a great investment!", "Easy money!", "How much change do I get?", and even "This game brings out the worst in me...". I was also asked "What's a dividend?", which sparked a really great conversation.This will lead into the Property Module in Banqer. We also plan to look at Black Jack next, and the probability of different playing cards in a deck. So much fun for the end of term!

Erin Wilkinson