Year 5 have been learning how to use Excel spread sheets to calculate money problems this week.
They then applied their learning when playing a simulation computer game called ‘My Sustainable House’ to create a sustainable home for their settlement.
The children had to choose materials (eg: wooden window frame or plastic window frame; concrete flooring or wooden flooring) within a budget and consider the environment when making their choices. Our ‘Sustainability Meter’ helped us to keep track of how sustainable our homes were. The children modified and refined their choices using both the model and an Excel spread sheet to aid with their decision making. They identified key costs and considerations and articulated this well.
Year 5 showed great resilience in developing their spread sheet further to create a better lay-out presentation, combining it into a report. We had an interesting discussion about the benefits of using a simulation and Excel in problem solving. Some of us finished our budget before finishing our homes (oops!) so we tried again and again until we were satisfied that we had created the most sustainable home for our settlement within the budget of £100,000 (simulation money). We realised quite quickly that materials needed to build a home can be expensive and so we had to keep a close eye on our budget and expenditure.
We will be applying our skills on Friday when we will have to use Excel to calculate our profit from our Enterprise Week sales.
