I. Your Students' Situation

Intended to help teachers launch a home-buying readiness class, this first section of tools introduces the topic of home buying in nonintimidating and meaningful ways. Within this section you will find materials that assess students’ prior knowledge about home buying, support students as they express some of the many images and ideas they hold about “home,” and invite students to probe the costs and benefits of owning a home. When and if they choose to do so, there are activities that encourage students to begin the actual search for a home.

As mentioned, a number of tools will help you determine what your students already know about home buying and what your students would like to know more about. For example, pretests assess students’ knowledge of the home-buying process and can be used again at the end of the class as post-tests to assess what students have learned. True/false questionnaires may reveal misconceptions about home buying and can serve as useful catalysts for discussion. Using inquiry as a process where students and teachers generate questions about a topic and then conduct research to find the answers is another approach to determining what your students know and what they want to know more about.

The collection of guided-imagery prompts and other writing activities will encourage your students to reflect on the concept of “home.” A teacher reflection provides a guided writing sample that moves through a series of writing exercises, and a collection of student writing models how other students have responded to the activities within the curriculum. These tools will help your students think about housing and home in new ways. In addition, the student writing samples illustrate how peers have approached the critical decision to pursue homeownership.

Teachers can help their students safely navigate through the costs and benefits of owning and maintaining a home by using a series of tools within this section. Listing the advantages and disadvantages of homeownership and responding to a fictional family that is thinking of buying a home are two of many activities that can prompt a serious consideration of homeownership.

Concrete tools such as checklists and vocabulary exercises provide good methods of homeownership exploration and round out the Your Students’ Situation section.

Previous Page | Next Page