Teaching about investing in your class? We have you covered! Check out our collection of investing lesson plans, divided up by age group, with great ways to incorporate HowTheMarketWorks into the lessons!
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Investing Lesson Plans For All Age Groups
Stock Market and Investing Introduction
- Topic: Investment basics
- Personal Finance Standard Covered: Investing (Standard 2) – Evaluate investment alternatives.
- Source: HowTheMarketWorks, by the HowTheMarketWorks Team
- Description: This is a “basics of the basics” lesson plan, covering some core investment vocabulary (“Sole Proprietorship”, “Partnership”, “Stock Broker”, ect), building up to core concepts of investing, and all brought together by placing trades on HowTheMarketWorks. It also covers concepts such as “What is a Stock“, how are public companies created, and more.
- Using HowTheMarketWorks: This lesson integrates trading on HowTheMarketWorks, with some of the core concepts included as part of our Assignments feature.
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Investing Lesson Plans For Elementary School And Up
Buy A Bond, James!
- Topic: Bonds
- Personal Finance Standard Covered: Investing (Standard 2) – Evaluate investment alternatives.
- Source: EconEdLink
- Description: This is a basic lesson plan talking about what savings bonds are, how the government uses revenue from bonds, and why it might be a good way to start saving as early as possible
- Using HowTheMarketWorks: We have more resources on Bonds available in our Education Center, but you can also give your students a great interactive assignment by using our Compound Interest Calculator or Saving to be a Millionaire Calculator to show how important it is to start saving early. These are both also integrated into our Assignments feature, so you can easily assign this as homework, and track your students’ progress.
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Saving And Investing
- Topic: Investment
- Personal Finance Standard Covered: Investing (Standard 3) – Demonstrate how to buy and sell investments.
- Source: Practical Money Skills For Life
- Description: This lesson plan is an introduction to what investment is, and some basic vocabulary like “financial risk” and “rate of return”. The lesson seeks to help students understand that different savings options exist and can have a large affect on their rate of return.
- Using HowTheMarketWorks: You can use Assignments on HowTheMarketWorks to have your students read basic articles about Stocks, or play with personal finance calculators, like our Millionaire Calculator, that help show how different rates of return can add up big over time.
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Click Here To Access The Student Activity Sheet For This Lesson Plan
Investing Lesson Plans For Middle School And Up
Developing A Financial Investment Portfolio
- Topic: Personal Finances
- Personal Finance Standard Covered: Investing (Standard 2) – Evaluate investment alternatives.
- Source: EconEdLink, by Mickey Ebert
- Description: Students love nothing more than putting things off, and thinking about their own personal finances are no exception. To get them thinking about it in a whole new light, this lesson plan has your students act as a Financial Adviser to 3 different types of people, and trying to find the best savings and investment plan to fit their individual needs.
- Using HowTheMarketWorks: One idea that teachers have been using is to create three contests on HowTheMarketWorks, and have each student join all three. The students then need to develop the investment strategy for each of the three types of people in different portfolios, and see how the rates of return and risk change over time!
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Investing Lesson Plans For High School And Up
Owning a Car
- Topic: Money
- Personal Finance Standard Covered: Risk Management and Insurance (Standard 2) – Justify reasons to use property and liability insurance.
- Source:EconEdLink, by Sue Lynn Sasser
- Description: Using a Better Money Habits video, this lesson introduces students to the various costs associated with buying and operating a car, including monthly payments, gasoline, insurance, and maintenance.
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The NYSE Made Easy
- Topic: Stocks
- Personal Finance Standard Covered: Investing (Standard 2) – Evaluate investment alternatives.
- Source: EconEdLink, by Matthew Wolfe
- Description: This is a more condensed version of the HowTheMarketWorks lesson plan above, with more information about reading stock quotes. It also includes a short stock project.
- Using HowTheMarketWorks: You can use our Quotes page for students to get a lot more market news and do more research on any stock they choose, all in one place! There are dozens of other research tools, including detailed quote information (like bid and ask), interactive stock charts, historical prices, and a whole lot more.
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The Five Stages Of Investing
- Topic: Personal Finances
- Personal Finance Standard Covered: Investing (Standard 3) – Demonstrate how to buy and sell investments.
- Source: EconEdLink, by Melissa Smith
- Description: There are dozens of ways to save an invest, most of them involve balancing the risks and returns of each investment vehicle. This lesson plan is designed to help high school students decide what balance they would like to work with as they prepare for their own future personal finances
- Using HowTheMarketWorks: HowTheMarketWorks is perfect for practice in building balanced investments. While its easy to see how to invest in Stocks and Mutual Funds, students can also branch out into ETFs specializing in commodities and bonds. Best yet, all cash they have not invested acts like it is in a Money Market savings account, and earns 3% interest. While working through this lesson, it can be great to talk about all the ways students can balance their portfolio, and even see how the markets affect their decisions over the course of the class!
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Understanding And Analyzing An Income Statement
- Topic: Investments
- Personal Finance Standard Covered: Investing (Standard 3) – Demonstrate how to buy and sell investments.
- Source: EconEdLink, by Mike Fladlien
- Description: Once students have an idea what investing means, this resource will walk through the steps at actually looking at company’s public information to decide whether or not it might be a good thing to invest in, and how to tell companies apart using some very simple reports.
- Using HowTheMarketWorks: Everything covered in this lesson plan is present in our Quotes Tool, including the income statements and balance sheets of just about every publicly traded company in the United States. Have your students take a look at the balance sheets of companies they invest in their HowTheMarketWorks portfolios, and write a few sentences about why they think what they see makes that company a stronger or weaker investment!
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Here’s Your Chance To Make Millions In The Stock Market
- Topic: Stock Market
- Personal Finance Standard Covered: Investing(Standard 2) – Evaluate investment alternatives.
- Source: EconEdLink, by William Trainor
- Description: This is the “Here’s Your Chance To Make Your Millions In The Stock Market!” series of lesson plans. This will walk your students through why it is hard to make, or lose, money in the stock market in the long term, showing that while investing can be risky, it can be the best way to build savings in the long run.
- Using HowTheMarketWorks: This has HowTheMarketWorks written all over it! At each step in each of the lessons, students can perform almost every activity in their HowTheMarketWorks portfolio. Additionally, we have our “How To Become A Millionaire” calculator, which students can use to see exactly what rate of return they need to achieve to reach their goals!
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