Day 3:
On Day 3, the students got to see a memo that another group wrote. They had to review the source material—what the other groups had based their memo on—and then they discussed whether or not they thought the student group had made the right decision, the right recommendation. Then they had to write a three-paragraph critique of that group’s memo. I showed them the Rubric: Peer Reviews (Teacher Resource 13.3) and reminded them to let that help them with their writing. While the groups were working, I went around to check in to see how they were doing, to see if they were on the right track. After students worked on their critique, we had he a larger class discussion about what we thought of the memos.

The curriculum for Day 3 reminds the teacher to take time for a reflection, and to help the students think about what it was that we were studying and why, what it was that we learned. I thought that the reflection was useful in this lesson. The students thought a little bit about the group dynamic, about how well they had worked with each other. They gave each other credit for the tasks, for the ideas that each individual member came up with. They also thought that they had learned about situations that we had studied in other parts of the Principles of Finance course. They recognized that they had learned about income statements and about audits and about the importance of accurate, honest reporting, and then they got to deal with it in this ethical situation. They put together what they had learned weeks ago with what we did today. All of that came out in the reflection and strengthened, I’m sure, their retention of what it was that we spent three days doing.