Every Student Needs Personal Finance In High School
Blog post written by NGPF Fellow, Lana Main of West Central High School in Hartford, South Dakota. Her school will be receiving a $10,000 Gold Standard Challenge Grant from NGPF.
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“I wish I’d had this class when I was in high school!”
How many times have you heard this from a parent at conferences or elsewhere? One of my favorite parts of parent-teacher conferences has always been having the opportunity to share with parents what their...
GOOGLE FORMS: Video #1 - Where are Google Forms in the NGPF Curriculum?
If you are wondering how to use Google Forms in your classroom, look no further! Amanda Volz has created a series of short tutorial videos to help you incorporate Google Forms more frequently and effectively in your classroom.
NGPF offers many assignments and assessments in Google Forms format. The FIRST VIDEO of this series demonstrates where you can find Google Form assignments, activities, and assessments in the NGPF curriculum.
0:45 - Where to find Fine Print activities...
Question of the Day: What does the average household pay in real estate property taxes annually?
Answer: $2,279
How does your state rank (click here for the details behind the map)?
Questions:
How does your state rank when it comes to real estate property taxes?
If you are a renter, do property taxes matter since the property owner pays them? Explain your answer.
Click here for the ready-to-go slides for this Question of the Day that you can use in your classroom.
Behind the numbers (WalletHub):
Depending on where you live, property taxes can be a small inconvenience or...
Interactive Monday: What's the Unemployment Rate in Your County?
The Census Bureau puts out some great data visualizations on a county-by-county level here.
Here's the Employment Status visualization which measures Unemployment Rate here (click on map for interactivity):
Questions:
Study the legend to determine how the shading corresponds to the unemployment rate.
What are 2-3 patterns you see when you look at the map of the United States?
Are there specific states where you see that unemployment is extremely high or extremely low? ...
Question of the Day: Researchers have found five ways that spending money can make us happy. Can you name two of them?
By Tim Ranzetta
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Jan 26, 2020
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Question of the Day, Behavioral Finance, Purchase Decisions, Budgeting
Hat tip to Nick Maggiulli of Dollars and Data blog for highlighting this research from .
Answer:
Buying experiences
Treating yourself (on occasion)
Buying extra time
Paying upfront (i.e. all-inclusive vacations)
Spending on others
Questions:
What are ways that you spend money that bring happiness to you? Do they fit into any of these five categories?
Why do you think that researchers found that "buying experiences" might create more happiness than buying "things?"...
Reading List for January 24-26
By Beth Tallman
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Jan 24, 2020
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Current Events, Credit Scores, Budgeting, Career, Investing, Retirement, Personal Finance
Current Events/Credit Scores
One of the biggest stories hitting this week and running through social media is news of the new FICO scoring criteria. (USA Today)
“Most consumers will see less than a 20-point swing in either direction,” David Shellenberger, FICO’s vice president, product management, scores, said in a statement on Thursday. “That’s roughly 110 million that will see only a modest change to scores, if at all.”
Budgeting
Many of you shared...
NGPF Podcast: Educator Rob Phelan on the joys of entrepreneurship
You get the sense after talking to Rob Phelan that he must thrive on little sleep. As you'll discover in this podcast, he has quite a few "side hustles" beyond his full-time teaching job at Catoctin High School (Maryland). Our conversation touches on entrepreneurship, the F.I.R.E.(Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement, his favorite activities in the classroom and the philosophy behind the curriculum that he is developing. Listen intently to his "scorecard" concept which emphasizes...
FinCap Friday: Stacking Unused Gift Cards
In this FinCap Friday we check out the latest news about consumers who don't use the money on gift cards they were given. What exactly happens to this money? The holidays is an especially common time to buy popular gift cards as gifts for friends, family and coworkers. Several recent articles cover the statistics around this issue and students will be surprised to know what happens when they misplace or forget about old gift cards! Find out more about the details in this week's FinCap Friday:...
QoD: Guess the percentage of each age group that has their driver's license: 16 year olds? 17 year olds? 18 year olds?
Answer:
16 year olds: 25.6%
17 year olds: 49%
18 year olds: 60.9%
Questions:
When did you get your driver’s license OR when do you plan to get your license?
What factors determined/will determine when you get your license?
When it comes to auto insurance, do you think the cost of insuring a 16 year old is higher or lower then insuring an 18 year old? Explain your answer.
What has been the overall trend in the percentage of teens with driver's licenses over the past 40-50 years? What...
End of Course Student Surveys: Capturing The Magic That Occurs in Personal Finance Classes
Ever wonder that students think are the most important skills they picked up in your classroom? An End-of-Course survey can be a great way to see what "stuck" in your students' minds. Thanks to NGPF Fellow Sue Suttich for sharing the results from her student survey (here's a template that you can use for your End-of-Course Student Survey):
Here's a few themes that came out of it:
What's important and useful to students can be very different on student-by-student basis due to their...
QoD: Can you name 3 of the top 10 things that adults overspend on (i.e., spend more than their budget)?
Answer:
Questions:
Do you have a budget? Are you able to stick to it all of the time/some of the time/none of the time?
How would you answer this question for yourself: What are the purchases that cause you to overspend?
Take 2 or 3 items from the top 10 list and explain why that specific item leads to overspending.
Explain strategies that you could use to control spending in those categories.
Click here for the ready-to-go slides for this Question of the...
Teach The Triangle: Making Purchase Decisions
Hat tip to Erica Pavlik of Neuqua Valley High School who reached out and suggested we curate resources to help "Teach the Triangle," an instructional idea created by her principal, Lance Fuhrer. Here's how she explained this concept:
"It is like your data crunch but taken a step farther. It collects three types of data (image, article & graph) on a similar topic and ask students one question: What can you infer from this?"
We thought we would give it a go. Here are three resources...
A Reflection on Teaching and Learning, According to My 5-Year-Old
My oldest daughter is in Transitional Kindergarten, a class full of five-year-olds with fall birthdays who were too young to start actual kindergarten in September. Each day this week, when I picked her up from extended care, she hit me with some new details of their learning about Martin Luther King Jr -- timely, with the holiday approaching and all. Now, I haven't requested to view any lesson plans or asked the teacher for details about learning objectives so I can't tell if the students...
QoD [UPDATED]: What percent of graduates leave college with student loan debt?
Answer: 65% of Class of 2018 had student debt when they graduated [latest data available from TICAS] with an average debt of $29,200
Questions:
Why do you think that so many students need to take out student loans to pay for college?
What are other ways that students can pay for college?
Do you think taking on student debt is a positive or a negative? Develop a list of pros and cons.
How would you compare it to credit card debt or auto loans?
Here's the ready-to-go slides for this...
TEACHER TIP - ANALYZE: A Student Aid Report (SAR)
Amanda Volz brings you a Teacher Tip video on the activity ANALYZE: A Student Aid Report (SAR). This activity has students answer questions while reviewing a sample Student Aid Report and understand the importance of the SAR in the financial aid process. In this video, Amanda discusses how she used this activity in her classroom and provides some tips for you to use it with your students!
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Did you know that we have 35 of these Teacher Tip Videos on our YouTube...
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