Essential question: Which risks should a person retain, reduce, transfer through insurance, or avoid?
Instructional caution: Distinguish factual definitions, legal holdings, economic relationships, value judgments, and policy preferences. Do not grade students for political viewpoint; grade evidence, accuracy, reasoning, citation, and disciplinary method.
Choose coverage for five households with different risks and explain premium, deductible, limit, exclusion, and retained risk.
Compare hypothetical policy declarations and calculate out-of-pocket cost under several claims.
Instructional aim: Define the Week 12 problem, establish the relevant institutions or economic relationships, and construct an initial answer to the essential question.
Evidence of learning: Identify one distinction that prevents a common oversimplification of this topic.
Support: Provide a vocabulary preview, chunked text, text-to-speech, and claim/evidence sentence frames.
Extension: Identify a competing theoretical interpretation and describe what evidence could distinguish it.
Instructional aim: Evaluate a primary record, legal case, policy document, contract, or institutional source for authority, evidence, context, and limitation.
Evidence of learning: State one claim the focal record supports and one claim it cannot establish alone.
Support: Define specialized language, provide a structured annotation guide, and allow oral rehearsal before writing.
Extension: Locate a source from a different institutional or social position and explain how it confirms, complicates, or contradicts the first.
Instructional aim: Interpret a quantitative model, institutional process, financial calculation, or policy tradeoff without confusing description and causation.
Evidence of learning: Explain which conclusion remains valid after the changed assumption and which conclusion does not.
Support: Provide labeled examples, formulas or process steps, and a partially completed model.
Extension: Perform a sensitivity analysis or compare an alternative policy/institutional design.
Instructional aim: Construct and defend a precise claim using disciplinary evidence, a counterclaim, and a proportionate conclusion.
Evidence of learning: Explain why the counterclaim deserves a response rather than dismissal.
Support: Use claim-evidence-reasoning frames and permit an audio or oral draft before the final written product.
Extension: Rewrite the recommendation for an audience with a different role, jurisdiction, time horizon, or risk tolerance.
Instructional aim: Demonstrate weekly mastery, correct misconceptions, and transfer the central concept to a new case.
Evidence of learning: Apply the week’s reasoning to this mastery action: A student compares identical loss scenarios across policies and checks limits, deductibles, exclusions, and liability rather than premium alone.
Support: Allow extended time, reduced-distraction setting, read-aloud where appropriate, and repeated attempts after documented correction.
Extension: Write one high-quality examination question and an answer key explaining why each distractor is wrong.
Each principal assignment is worth 30 points: 8 accuracy, 8 evidence or calculation, 6 reasoning, 4 counterargument/limitation, and 4 clarity/citation. Use the course rubrics for expanded descriptors.
| # | Question | Answer | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Which definition best matches “risk management”? | C | Risk management means identification, evaluation, and treatment of uncertain losses. |
| 2 | Which definition best matches “premium”? | C | Premium means the price paid for insurance coverage. |
| 3 | Which definition best matches “deductible”? | D | Deductible means the amount the insured pays before specified coverage begins. |
| 4 | Which definition best matches “coverage limit”? | C | Coverage limit means the maximum amount an insurer will pay under a provision. |
| 5 | Which definition best matches “exclusion”? | C | Exclusion means a condition or event not covered by a policy. |
| 6 | Which definition best matches “liability coverage”? | D | Liability coverage means protection against specified claims that the insured caused injury or damage to another. |
| 7 | Which statement is most consistent with the evidence and reasoning developed in Week 12? | D | Insurance is best suited to low-frequency or uncertain losses that would be financially severe. |
| 8 | Which statement is most consistent with the evidence and reasoning developed in Week 12? | D | A lower premium may reflect a higher deductible, lower limit, narrower coverage, or more exclusions. |
| 9 | Which statement is most consistent with the evidence and reasoning developed in Week 12? | A | Policy comparison requires matching scenarios, limits, deductibles, exclusions, provider networks, and financial stability. |
| 10 | Which action best demonstrates mastery of the Week 12 inquiry? | D | A student compares identical loss scenarios across policies and checks limits, deductibles, exclusions, and liability rather than premium alone. |
Which financial risks are too severe for a household to self-insure even when premiums are expensive?
5 points: clear claim, accurate disciplinary reasoning, two specific pieces of evidence, meaningful qualification or counterargument, and complete explanation.