I’m a big believer in integrating necessary content all throughout your school day.
Even if we’re doing language wall, I’ll have my students add up the amount of things we were able to label and we keep a running total on the board. After 5-6 weeks, we stop and find the average.
If we are reading about chemical reactions and come across a new-to-us word, we stop and look for Greek or Latin roots that can help us understand the meaning.
I could go on but the bottom line is that the more exposure and on-the-spot practice we can get, the better chance the information or skill is retained.
Enter: The Great Stock Market Race.
Now, I have done this with fourth and fifth graders but you could definitely do this (and possibly go even deeper) with older kids, too.
In a nutshell, you are challenging them to a financial race where everyone starts out with the same amount of money to invest in the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE; though you could use any stock market to track as long as you’re consistent).
We typically start in the spring and for us, it’s a three month, ongoing project. You can totally adapt any and all of this to fit your time constraints.
I ask who has heard about stocks or the stock market and I always have a handful of kids that share what they know. We discuss and we read the passages in HERE. This gives us a great understanding in terms that make sense.
If you have access, Brain Pop also has an informative video.
Next, we dive in and discuss what it means to hold a share of a company and what companies are public. There is a list in HERE but you can also search online.
My go-to is Yahoo Finance; in fact, I even post a link on Google Classroom so students can practice checking to see if a company is available and if so, what the abbreviation is and what the cost per share is.
I “give” my students $10,000 to invest. You can certainly do less and you can certainly do more.
At this point, we really work through HERE. I give my kids a file folder and make it very official. We create our investor profiles and they begin selecting the stocks they want to purchase.
Each of these lessons takes us about 45 minutes and we do it during our social studies block. Once they have their options selected and they’ve invested, it takes only moments to check. More on that in a second.
When my kids invest, we have a few guidelines that I’ve found to be helpful throughout the years.
-We round to the nearest dollar. While we DO learn how to multiply decimals, this has been an effective way to avoid student overwhelm.
-I want them to invest in at least two stocks. Some will want to buy many, many shares of one company and that’s fine BUT I want at least two companies.
-They do the math (multiply the cost of the share by the amount of shares) on the worksheets in HERE and then they meet with their math partner to check each other’s work.
I do have about 15 student calculators and they’re always available, once kids show me their own calculations.
My kids keep all their work in their portfolios and we check our stocks 2-3 times a week.
The stock market is a long game so we talk through the highs and the lows. They record their progress (or losses), which takes anywhere from 5-10 minutes. We typically do it either right after morning meeting OR right before we pack up. However, it’s always a May Do option for students, too.
At the end of the simulation, students again do the math to see where they’re at and who has made the most off their investments. I usually give the top three investors a tiny trophy or homework pass.
Why do I do this? Well, first and foremost, it gets them practicing their math skills in a completely real-world situation. They become SO engaged and invested and really want to earn money (even if it’s not real).
It also encourages conversations at home and how awesome is that?! I love when parents get on it and help kids check over our spring break!
While I don’t allow students to sell their shares (once you’re invested, it’s yours), you definitely could extend to do that. Also, I run mine the last three months of the school year but again, you could do more or less time.
It really is an enriching experience and if you have any questions, leave them below!
