Authentic Assessment

After reading the article on Authentic Assessment, I realized that some of the activities I have done with my Financial Literacy class would qualify. Earlier in the semester, I split the students up into groups of five that we dubbed "businesses." We use these groups to make our assignments and projects more authentic because we are implementing ideas and concepts previously presented in our textbook. We form budgets for the businesses. We track profits and losses. We looked at how much we could anticipate in a tax return given our yearly statements. Moving forward, my goal is for the students to see that even if their fictional business don't exist outside of school, it gives them hands-on experience in dealing with financial matters and applicable tasks. And hopefully they will emerge from high school prepared to be responsible with their money and occupations when they finally do enter the workforce.