Lesson Plan: Learning Through Giving: Sponsoring a Child

Our class is helping our school support two children in other countries.  With only $38 per month per child, we are able to provide clean food, clean water, education, and instruction of the gospel.  Getting students to sacrifice money to do this can be difficult.  This lesson will be used to help middle schoolers realize how small of a sacrifice it is for the students to give and how much it provides for the children that are being sponsored.  It is powerful, yet simple.  Here is the review:

1.       Descriptive Data- This lesson is for a class of 16 8^th graders.  There are 7 boys and 9 girls in the class.  The class is a mix of rural and suburban backgrounds.  There are 15 Caucasian students with one African-born student adopted into a Caucasian-American family.  There are no special learning needs in the classroom.  This class is part of a departmentalized middle school within a 160 student K-8 Lutheran school.  About one-third of our school is Lutheran, with one-third some other Christian affiliation, with one-third having no church ties.

2.       Prior Requirements-  For this lesson, the students will already have a working knowledge of the internet, Word, and Excel.  They will have been given an introductory lesson in how to post a blog on the class blog on blogger.com.  They are also on an 8^th grade level or higher in math.

3.       Learning Objectives-

a.       The students will apply the basic math operations to real-life situations.

b.      The students will be able to calculate the percent of change given a real-world situation.

c.       The students will be able to calculate percent when given a real-world problem.

4.       Assessment of Student Learning- The students will post a blog of their findings on a class blog page.  This will be graded for accuracy and completeness.

5.       Rationale- This year, our class has been supporting two children; one through Compassion International and one through World Vision.  Each child is supported with $38 per month.  This monthly donation provides clean food, clean water, education, and the presentation of the Gospel.  This lesson will give some perspective to how far their money can go by comparing it to how much things cost in their reality.  It will help them understand how fortunate they are, and how little is being asked of them to provide so much.

6.       Materials and Equipment – Materials needed will be a computer lab with internet access and a word processor, a google account for every student, a class blog set up prior to the lesson on blogger.com, and scratch paper with pencils.

7.       Procedure-

a.       This lesson will most likely take several class periods and will be most effective the week before Christmas break.

b.      Have the students create a Christmas wish list of 5 items they would like for Christmas.  Use the internet to look up exactly each item costs.  They can spend $456.

c.       Keep track of everything they find on an excel spreadsheet.

d.      Next, since they just made a list of what they want, now make a list of everything they need to survive per month (food, clothes, etc.).  Get specific.  Look up how much the items cost.  At this point, they have no cash restrictions.

e.      After they plan their needs, tell them they have a $456 budget to spend for the month.

f.        Perhaps they plan on saving some each month to work towards the wish list they made earlier.

g.       After they have planned out their budget, tell them to re-work their budget knowing they have $456 to spend for the year.  We would do the math to determine that this is $38 per month.

h.      Ask them to calculate what percentage of decrease there is from their original budget to their current one.

i.         Explain that this is the budget we provide for the children we sponsor that provides for everything they need.

j.        Split the class in half.  Half of the class will research the country one of the kids is from while the other researches the other country.  What type of food do they eat?  Are there any specific needs someone living in that country would have?

k.       Calculate how much money it would cost per month to live with those needs in our country.  What percent is the $38 of that amount?

l.         Calculate: “If we support two children at $38 per month, and there are 16 8^th graders in the class, how much will that cost per student to support per month?  Per year?”

m.    Have them look at the budget and wish list they came up with earlier.  What could be sacrificed off your list to come up with the amount needed per student to support these two children?

n.      Once we complete the calculations, they will take the data they gathered throughout the assignment and create a narrative blog post on blogger.com showing what they wanted, needed, and sacrificed to potentially live off what it will take for the children we sponsor to live.  Each step of our assignment needs to be represented in the blog.  This will be graded on effort and completeness.

o.      Once the blog posts are completed, I will send a link to the blog home so parents can see what they learned about the children we sponsor.  This blog may also be sent, with permission, to Compassion and World Vision so they can see the students working to support their sponsored children.