Buying a Home: Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking and a Little Math
Spring 1998
by Shirley Taylor
SCALE - Somerville, MA
Narrowing the Focus
I decided to focus on several of the lessons from the first two units of the FannieMae Foundation's curriculum How to Buy a Home in the United States (Unit 1: "Do you want to buy a home?" and Unit 2: "Finding your dream home"). I chose these units because I felt that they provided good introductory material and also great opportunities for expansion. In addition, I felt that the students and I could easily relate to the content areas based on our own home ownership/rental experience. I did not feel prepared to discuss the technicalities of mortgage financing, and I was also concerned that focusing on the financial aspects of home ownership might be threatening to some of the students, especially those struggling to find adequate employment. Beginning at the end April and over the course of approximately three weeks, we completed four lessons.
Introducing the Text
Objectives
1. Introduce the textbook and its format.
2. Discuss advantages and disadvantages of home ownership.
3. Practice letter writing with an emphasis on format and organization.
Time: 2 hours
I handed out the text, How to Buy a Home in the United States, and we talked about the table of contents, the glossary and the organization of the book into units. We had never really had a chance to talk about the parts of a book, and so this was a great opportunity to discuss what you can expect to find in a book and how it might be organized. We practiced using the Contents to predict where we might find various kinds of information. They were very pleased to have a book that they could keep, and had fun looking through it. They seemed eager to know more.
We then read through the story in Unit 1, Lesson 1 ("This apartment is too small!") and began to talk in small groups and then as a class about the advantages and disadvantages of owning a home. I asked them to use a divided worksheet to list the advantages and disadvantages of homebuying.
They used these worksheets to write an advice letter to Rosa and Manuel for homework. Prior to writing, we discussed the format of a letter and how this one could be organized (paragraph 1: advantages, paragraph 2: disadvantages, paragraph 3: opinion).
It felt like we covered a lot of ground in this lesson. In addition to the objectives, it was a great introduction to a lot of vocabulary such as mortgage, interest, landlord, lender, lease, insurance, real estate, agent.
Homebuying Priorities
Objectives
1. Practice brainstorming / prioritizing
2. Grammar points - question formation, modals of necessity
Time: 1 and 1/2 hours
Before beginning this lesson, I asked the students to read Lesson 1 of Unit 2 ("Deciding what you want") and develop at least five questions that they would ask themselves as they thought about buying a house. This activity gave them practice in question formation. In addition, it helped them to think about some of the decisions that must be made at the beginning of the home ownership process.
After the students shared their questions and asked many more, we reviewed the vocabulary in the lesson. Together we brainstormed, first as a class, and then in small groups, some of the first decisions - location, style of house, size of house, cost of house, age of house, etc. I then asked them to quickly write a list of their own requirements. When they had completed their list, I asked them to prioritize their requirements. Each student was asked to talk about the most important requirement and explain why it was the most important. It was interesting that location seemed to be the most important requirement (thus affirming the real estate adage "Location, Location, Location").
We moved from this discussion to a grammar lesson in which I introduced the modal auxillaries that would allow them to express the importance of their requirements, i.e,. "the house must have a good roof. It does not have to have air conditioning." The students then used their requirement list to complete a worksheet which emphasized the use of these modals.
As homework the students used the requirements list and the modal worksheet to develop a description of the house that they wanted. Many of them later input their description on the computer.
Truth in Advertising
Objectives
1. Practice scanning (real estate advertisements)
2. Make choices (include/eliminate)
3. Assess truth of advertisements
Time: 2 hours
In preparation for this lesson the students read Lesson 2 of Unit 2 "How to find the right home" and we discussed the various ways to find a house in their countries, and in the U.S.
Cathy Anderson attended this class and led a discussion of the possibilities for low income buyers. The students were surprised to learn that 17% of U.S. home buyers have an income of less than $30,000, and that sometimes a down payment of 3% is acceptable. We had an opportunity to practice a little percentage math.
The students spent the rest of the lesson looking over real estate shoppers' guides (free at the grocery store) which advertised various homes throughout New England. Their task was to pick one house and cut out the advertisement. They used maps of New England to find the town (since many of the more economical homes were in very rural places) and had a lot of fun assessing the variety of houses they found, and finding vocabulary to describe the various features of the houses they were considering. They often wondered about the "truthfulness" of the ad and speculated about hidden meanings.
The students' reaction to this class varied. In some cases they were overwhelmed with the prices, and treated the activity as a fantasy exercise, choosing between two and three million dollar homes. Many students chose to focus on modest homes and were disappointed to find that they were in areas far from Boston. Although some found houses that they thought were reasonable in the Boston area, some seemed saddened by the realization about costs. One student eventually refused to participate, I think because she found the activity threatening.
Reading and Explaining What You Learned
Objectives
1. Making an oral presentation to the class
2. Practice scanning for specific information
3. Reading strategies: scanning for specific information in ads vs. reading a text
Time: 2 hours
In this last lesson, I asked each person to work with a partner to discuss the house that they had picked from the lesson above. Each person then had to make a very short presentation to the class about their partner's house. I asked each person to explain why this was a good house for their partner. It was a fun activity and a good way to review vocabulary.
The second half of this lesson was a scanning activity. Using a list of real estate ads for Somerville and the immediate communities from the latest Sunday paper, the students worked with a partner to search for very specific information. This activity seemed very realistic to the students. We also had a chance to discuss various kinds of reading (i.e. scanning ads vs. reading text).
Lesson 4 was completed in the last week of class. In this final session I asked students how they felt about the project. Most were enthusiastic and expressed appreciation for the new vocabulary and practical information that they had learned. Some expressed disappointment that we had not done more. I, too, wished that there had been time to explore house maintenance issues, to use math skills such as measurement, ratio, and proportion to design a house, and to explore financing options in more depth.