It’s that time of year again! Echoes of Alice Cooper jolt you from your bed. Schoooool’s OUT… a little while longer! You wolf down 3 cups of coffee and schlep to school.

The hallways are abuzz before first period. State testing has wrapped. Sunshine and summertime beckon from just beyond, and students seem to be itching to do anything but learn. You have to summon everything in your power to keep your students engaged this deep into the waning school year.

NGPF is here to help! What better time to dive into relevant, life-changing personal finance lessons?

Here are 5 Activities you can do TOMORROW to keep your students engaged, curious and excited to learn during the last week of school.

1. PAYBACK Game & Activity [50 min]

In this Webby Award-winning paying for college game, students begin as high school seniors choosing a college. Then, they work to minimize their student loan debt while making real decisions to survive and thrive through college. Over 300,000 students have played PAYBACK. Here’s the corresponding Student Activity. There are 40 more interactive games in our Interactive Library too. 

2. Personal Finance Documentary 1-2 Punch [90 min]

In this 40 minute Spent: Looking for Change and 1 hour PBS Documentary Living on One Dollar [available on Amazon Prime Video], students relate to the universal financial pressures that both people living paycheck to paycheck and people living in extreme poverty face.

If you find these documentaries eye-opening, here are three more personal finance documentaries for students plus some implementation ideas and discussion questions. More videos can be found in our Video Library.  

3. Cat Insanity Game & Activity [50 min]

In this 5-7 minute mini-game, students feed cats until they run out of food, space, time or all of the above. It may sound silly, but the payoff is a rich, academic conversation about what it feels like to be overwhelmed by high-interest rate loans. Here’s the Cat Insanity Game with the corresponding Activity.

4. Joining The Market (Ravioli Den) Project [90 min]

A teacher favorite among the 10,000+ educators who use ngpf.org in their classrooms, Joining the Market has been known to get RAUCOUS. Students predict how the stock price of Ravioli Den, their favorite fast-casual ravioli restaurant, will change depending on different news items. Here’s the Joining The Market project. For the accompanying “BREAKING NEWS” slides, please create a free teacher account at the top right corner of this page. 

5. Credit Score Simulation and High Cost of Bad Credit Activities [50 min]

The GPA of your students' financial lives can be tricky to teach. These two activities work well in tandem as students first predict credit scores given a financial profile for three young adults. Next, they see how these scores impact the cost of a new car loan. Seeing the cost of bad credit will motivate your students to pay attention to managing their credit responsibly. 

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Want more great resources to get your students thinking, talking and DOING in your personal finance classroom? Create a free teacher account at the top right corner of this page.

About the Author

Christian Sherrill

Former teacher, forever financial education nerd. As NGPF's Director of Growth & Advocacy, Christian is laser-focused on our mission to guarantee all students a rigorous personal finance course before crossing the high school graduation stage. Having paid down over $40k in student loans in the span of 3 years - while living in the Bay Area on an entry level teacher's salary - he's eager to help the next generation avoid financial pitfalls one semester at a time.