In this post, I want to share some of the financial literacy activities I've made for my high school consumer math students over the years. My students have really enjoyed these activities and I think yours will, too. Some are printable, some are digital and some come in both formats.
Teaching Teens Financial Literacy
One of my favorite topics to teach students is financial literacy. Teens have a lot of questions about money management, from buying a car to credit cards to income taxes. Some of the questions my consumer math students would ask made me wonder how any kid could leave high school without taking a personal financial literacy class.
Below are financial literacy activities and other resources to help teens build these important skills in school. There is also a big bundle of consumer math activities linked below.
This financial literacy word wall supports students in a consumer math course to learn all of the vocabulary that surrounds managing money. It includes printable color, printable black and white and no-prep digital in Google Slides. All 3 versions are included in the same file.
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| Consumer Math Curriculum |
This new consumer math curriculum builds teens' financial literacy skills in an approachable way, and includes a student book, teacher's book, student note sheets, PowerPoint slides, editable quizzes and more. You can find the curriculum for download here.
I like to start the year with a discussion about wants vs. needs. Inevitably we always get to books and clothes, which makes for a fun discussion. Are books and clothes wants or needs?
Next, we learn how to balance a checkbook. We discuss that a lot of people just don't bother anymore, but that it is still important to keep track of the money going in and out. We learn how to make an Google Sheets checkbook that automatically calculates balances, and complete this set of checkbook task cards.
To make things fun, I make customized checks for my students. There is a free website here.
So much of learning this material is based on an understanding of calculating percentages. Here is a percentage of a number reference for student notebooks to remind students how we take a percentage of a number.
We then cover budgets and talk about what percentage of income should be dedicated to housing, food, entertainment, etc. By the time we get to these budget task cards, a lot of my students are really considering the costs of everything!
A former student from my early days of teaching posted on Facebook looking for advice. She was expecting a baby and wanted to know if we all thought that she should look for a new, safer car or continue to pay her current car loan at... 24% interest.
24%??? This broke my heart, and made me feel really thankful that I was later given the opportunity to teach consumer math. My hope is that I can help my current students avoid these financial pitfalls.
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| Paycheck task cards |
We do a lot of practice converting between different income measurements - net income, gross income, annual income, monthly income, weekly income, etc. We complete this unit with a set of paycheck task cards.
I give my students this formula:
We also learn how to convert income more accurately, but this quick calculation allows students to compare a job with an hourly wage vs. a job with an annual salary. The 2000 hours comes from 40 hours per week x 50 hours a year. It's a nice, quick calculation to make, especially for students being asked by supervisors if they'd like to take on manager roles.
(hourly pay)*(2000) = gross annual income
We also learn how to convert income more accurately, but this quick calculation allows students to compare a job with an hourly wage vs. a job with an annual salary. The 2000 hours comes from 40 hours per week x 50 hours a year. It's a nice, quick calculation to make, especially for students being asked by supervisors if they'd like to take on manager roles.
Becoming a manager sounds very appealing to teens, until they later realize that overtime pay is now off the table and their manager income is actually less than it was when they were paid hourly. This doesn't always happen, but it's good for teenagers to be aware that it can happen.
Percentages come up throughout consumer math. They're the tiniest little numbers but they can mean big money. We do a lot of practice finding percentages, calculating tips, tax, discounts.
One of the greatest things about being a teenager is going out to eat. How many times do they show up to class with a bag of fries or a burrito? Teens talk about food constantly and always seem to be hungry. We discuss the importance of leaving a tip when going out to eat, and knowing how much money to leave as a tip, before completing this set of tip task cards.
We practice finding 10% of a bill then doubling it. We then practice this as mental math through number talks. The PPT of number talks slides we use in class is free here. You can read more about the number talks we do in class in this post.
One of our review activities is this percentages scavenger hunt that covers tax, tips and discounts. It's a free download here.
Students can start on any of the 20 numbered sheets. They then complete the problem on that sheet, and look for their answer at the top of another sheet in the room (I hang all of the sheets on the wall). Students record their work and will make it back to the first sheet at the end if they get all answers correct. If they "short circuit" (visit a sheet twice before completing the scavenger hunt). they have an answer wrong. My students really enjoyed this activity.
If you like interactive notebooks, I recently made this set of interest flippables for simple and compound interest. Under each flap is an explanation of that variable. Or you can choose the blank versions for students to write their own notes.
This simple interest escape room is also new. Students answer each puzzle's 4 questions, then type the correct code before moving on to the next puzzle. Only the correct 4-letter code will advance the escape room to the next puzzle.
There's also a printable version of the simple interest escape room, which is nice to give students in groups. I print a few copies of the puzzles, then have different groups start on different puzzles. Groups then swap puzzles with each other.
Prices of everything have changed so much over the years. This set of percent change task cards is based on past and current costs of items, and lets students see how much prices have increased from the past.
For discounts, there's this percent discounts math pennant that doubles as classroom decor when students finish them.
For my student who wanted a job but was afraid of making a mistake at the register, it was because he was worried about making change. This brand new set of making change task cards asks students to calculate the amount of change owed after a purchase, then the number of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies needed to make the change.
To check for understanding, we complete this Percents challenge game show that covers tax, tips, percent change, discounts and rounding. I added in rounding after realizing my students were still unsure how to round numbers. Do you see the same thing with your high school students?
One year I asked my consumer math students at the end of the year what their favorite unit was. "Income taxes." This was weird because the amount of complaining I heard throughout that unit was unreal! My guess is that even though our income taxes unit was a bear, my students appreciated learning how to file a tax return.
So many of my students go without getting a tax refund because they don't know how to fill out the paperwork. It's not right. So even though this unit is a real chore for all us, I feel it's necessary. We learn all about income taxes, fill out a bunch of practice 1040s and then complete an income tax 1040 task cards activity.
This is a new budgets digital math escape room. It's an answer-validated Google Form like the simple interest escape room above, and covers tax, tip and discounts.
I made this Shop the Grocery Store Google Forms activity by taking pictures of food in my house! Students calculate sale prices given discounts.
Another one of my students' favorite activities is this set of shop the classroom sale tags. I put them on objects around the room and students find their discounted prices. By this time in the year, it becomes clear how much they have learned and it's a great way to wrap up the year.
Getting back to taxes, I update this free 1040 cheat sheet every year to help teens file their tax returns. Despite what many people believe, dependents can file a tax return and receive a tax refund. If you want to know when it's updated, you can join the consumer math Facebook group.
Toilet paper math is the hardest math. This brand new unit price digital math escape room is a fun review of unit prices.
And last but not least, there is a free set of unit price task cards in my blog's free math resource library.
Activities in this post can be found inside this Consumer Math Activities Bundle.
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I love this! I am actually going to use some of it with my seniors! Each year we complete a budgeting activity and this added in will be perfect! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI loved teaching consumer math to my seniors! It was so rewarding teaching them the skills they wanted to learn about managing their finances.
DeleteGood morning. Was wondering if I purchase the curriculum does it include all the games and extra activities or are they all having to be purchased separately? I am trying to find an updated good consumer math curriculum for our school for missionary kids.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could always see names here. It must be a setting I don't have right. The Consumer Math Activities Bundle and the Scaffolded Consumer Math Curriculum are separate. The curriculum can stand on its own, though the activities bundle can be used as a supplement to bring in more activities.
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