Yahoo!!! Not Yahoo Mail, let’s use Yahoo Finance! Yahoo Finance is a media property owned and
part of Yahoo!’s network. Yahoo Finance
provides financial news, data and commentary related to stock quotes, financial
reports and economic updates. In the
past, I use Yahoo Finance to show students the difference in increasing,
decreasing, and constant phases on a graph.
They were most surprised when I used a stock ticker that they were
wearing or used, such as Nike or Apple.
One way to introduce Yahoo
Finance to your students would be to ask them what they find interesting or
what products are they using or wearing at that time. Obviously, one of the most used products is a
cell phone; and one of popularity is Apple products. I typed in Apple and boom! Students went crazy because they could see
the fluctuations in the graphs according to stock prices. Two things I asked students were: At what times was Apple increasing in stock price? What type of events happen that made that
created the increase, decrease or constant stock market price?
In my opinion, to get the most
of Yahoo Finance, use it in the beginning of the lesson. It’s a sure way to “hook” the students into
the content. Another advantage would be
that they would relate the examples of the pure content back to their favorite
brand stock market. For the ELL
students, the visual learning would be beneficial to them understanding and
reading the graphs. For example, my
students that are ELL used the brand stock market printout and connected the
slopes to the ones I assigned to them. They
were able to demonstrate their learnings by tracing the slope of an increase,
decrease and constant with their finger. The visual learning strategy is deluxe to diversify learning.
Located below is a shot of
Nike stock market over a 3-month period.
(Be sure to show the students over a long span rather than daily because
3 month periods show phases of increase, sharp increase, steepness, decrease,
drastic decrease and constant better).
http://finance.yahoo.com
This is very interesting. This is the first time I have heard of Yahoo FInance. I have seen it but I thought it was not that. I like the way you use it to connect with students. They get the chance to see their favorite item in the stocks. THis seems to hit all demographics as everyone wears clothes of varying brands, and most have cell phones.
ReplyDeleteHi Lavasia,
ReplyDeleteYour Yahoo Finance blog post is a great example of crossover between content area literacies in math and social studies. In high school civics&economics, student content literacy depends on the teacher giving them many opportunities to connect what they're learning to present-day examples of what are sometimes abstract concepts. Math students benefit from applying the (usually) abstract formulas they learn to real-world examples of their uses. In the future, I will think about the students in my civics&economics courses and try to incorporate content knowledge from math courses when I'm teaching about the stock market: this will strengthen content knowledge in *both* areas, since students learn how to make interdisciplinary connections. Reading and writing about the stock market in civics class can help them engage more deeply in math class.