Balanced Budgets

Lesson Content

• Lesson Plan Template:

  CTE Lesson Plan

• CTE Course Info and Benchmark Notes

  
  

  Course Title: Digital Information Technology

  Course Number: 8207310

  Career Cluster: Business, Management, and Administration

  CIP Number:

  Course Type: Career and Technology

  Standard(s) or benchmarks

  Focus

  6.01 Manipulate the worksheet by using the ribbon tabs, group settings, importing data/database, manipulating properties, files and folders.

  6.02 Create cell data and apply auto fill.

  6.03 Format cells and worksheets (e.g., by applying and manipulating cell formats, styles, merging and splitting cells, create row and column titles, hide and unhide column titles, rows and columns, page setup options, and manipulating views/themes).

  06.04 Create and analyze formulas and functions (e.g., apply conditional formula logic, name and cell ranges).

  MA.912.FL.2.5 Develop budgets that fit within various incomes using spreadsheets and other technology.

  MA.912.FL.1.1 Extend previous knowledge of operations of fractions, percentages and decimals to solve real-world problems involving money and business.

• Unit Outline

  
  

  Lesson 1: Use of spreadsheet to organize data. Teacher instruction would be given on how to open a spreadsheet program and begin with a blank worksheet. Students will then be instructed on the various features of the Home ribbon and the formatting options within the spreadsheet program to ensure that cells are the proper size for data to display correctly. Students will also be instructed on how to utilize various formulas to do math calculations within the spreadsheet program.

  Lesson 2: Items included in a business or personal budget. Teacher direct instruction will be based upon scenarios that a student in high school might encounter with a first-time job and expenses. The instruction will include various types of expenses they may have and how to budget for those items within a minimum wage job at part-time hours. Then the instruction will move into the future goals of the student including their first career job and salary they might have, what expenses come with living on their own or with roommates, to discuss how expenses and income work together to build a budget.

  This lesson will finish up with a discussion of one day owning a business and instruction on how business expenses are different than personal expenses and how an activity where students can conduct an internet search to find out common percentages of business expenses to build a budget.

  Lesson 3: Using the information from the previous two lessons this lesson will take the information taught previously and ask students to create a budget for two given scenarios. One is a personal budget and the second is a business budget, where both must be balanced in the end.

• Career Connection

  
  

  Career skills connections include technology by use of a spreadsheet program, critical thinking skills, resource management and information skills used to analyze data that allows the student to make a decision on the use of the information as it pertains to a scenario, and communication skills of written and oral aspects with the peer to peer review and final presentation of budgets.

• Learning Objectives

  
  

  Students will be able to:

  • Create and manipulate a worksheet to communicate two possible budget scenarios.
  • Demonstrate proper formatting techniques within the spreadsheet program by manipulating the program features
  • Develop two balanced budgets: one for a business budget and one for a personal budget

• Prior Knowledge

  
  

  Students should able to:

  • Open a blank workbook and input data into a worksheet for the spreadsheet program including titles, cell data, and formulas.
  • Manipulate formatting features of the spreadsheet program to include the use of formulas, use of alignment tools, and use of font tools.
  • Identify components of personal and business budgets stating the most common items included in both types of budgets. For example income, expenses, fixed versus not, and assets.

• Guiding Questions

  
  
  • How are personal and business budgets alike? How are they different?
  • In what ways can items in a budget be manipulated to ensure that the budget is balanced?
  • How could you use a spreadsheet to track your finances?
  • How does using a spreadsheet benefit a business owner with the expenses?

• Procedure

  
  
  1. To introduce the lesson, the teacher will conduct a whole group review of spreadsheet terms and budgets for the purpose of balancing and saving for the unknown. This review should come from the previously taught lessons. Teachers can use the PowerPoint presentation titled Spreadsheet Terms provided as an attachment for review if needed.
  2. After the review the teacher will provide direct whole group instruction on incomes for various career choices, and review possible items that are needed for the personal budget by asking students to state some current bills they have or are aware that their families have.
  3. The continued discussion as a whole group will then be directed to owning a business and how a business will have its own income stream and its own expenses. This can be a whole group discussion that helps to build the line items of the budget for the students to use in the assignment for this lesson.
  4. Teachers will view the handout titled Budget Scenarios provided as an attachment for some careers and business ideas that have income details, common percentages of line items for budgeting, and business ideas with revenue and profit details to give to students if necessary. These are guides that you can give out to students to use and help discuss the use of formulas for the budget assignment.
  5. Using a spreadsheet program students will open a blank worksheet and begin to create the personal budget. The teacher will monitor the room and help individually when needed to ensure the items are entered and cells manipulated to be properly formatted to display and print correctly.
     • The budget should have a column for income, expenses, and savings.
     • It should have a total for the expenses and a total for the income after expenses and savings to show balanced (zero). These totals should be found by using the =SUM formula of the program.
  6. Students will then select a new sheet at the bottom of the workbook to create a business budget and begin to input the data for the business income and expenses that will include savings and totals as previously done for the personal budget. In this budget, students can use the formulas to help determine percentage expenses for the business based on sales for the business. This is where teachers can make different scenarios for the students if they choose not to use the ones provided in the handout.
  7. The spreadsheet items should be formatted as a table. The cells should be properly formatted in size to show all text clearly and formulas should be used to gather the totals and sums.
  8. To bring the lesson to a close the teacher will conduct a final group discussion and ask the guiding questions as given previously. This whole group discussion should help to solidify the benefit of creating a budget for each scenario and help to identify items that are non-negotiable to the budgets.
  9. Finally, students will submit the two budget worksheets either by printing them or electronically sending them to the teacher.

• Teacher Notes

  
  

  For this assignment, the students will have previously discussed budgets and the items needed for a personal budget and a business budget. This activity will ask students to use a spreadsheet program like Excel to input data about two types of budgets within a set income amount. Students will need to manipulate the budget to fit all elements and create a balanced budget.

• Optional

  
  

  Formative Assessment Ideas:

  • During independent practice time teachers can assess student understanding of the use of the spreadsheet program features to include formatting and alignment of cells to display data, use of formulas to find totals and use of formulas to determine any percentage of income expenses. Teachers could ask students to select a cell to verify that the formula has been used for that data piece and provide help as needed to the students.

  Summative Assessment Ideas:

  • Electronically send the final worksheets showing two different balanced budgets for the scenarios given. The electronic submission will allow teachers to verify the proper use of the formulas in the worksheet. The formulas will include the SUM for the total line items and the division formula for the percentage-based items. Teachers will also verify that students properly formatted the cells to display correctly all titles and data including verification that the proper formatting of the percentages has been performed by using the % icon for the number dialog box.