If you've been a long-time member of the NGPF community, you probably recall when Investing was a unit tucked deep into the latter half of all of our courses. It's an advanced topic, and so went with the strategy of laying out ALL the fundamentals (checking, saving, budgeting, ...) before we tackled investing. But, not anymore! In the newly revamped Semester Course, we moved Investing the whole way up to the three-spot, and here are three reasons why: A) It's a high-interest topic amongst teens, so let's hit them early in the course to hook them in. B) It's the next step after saving -- why save when you can compound that growth with investing? C) When it comes to investing, start sooner rather than later! Time is in your favor, and teaching it early allows you to circle back throughout the whole rest of the course. The Semester Course Investing unit is LONG, and here's what you need to know. 

The First 5 Lessons

The first five lessons lay the foundations. First up, WHY investing is so important, followed by lessons on the stock markets, stocks, bonds, and mitigating risk using diversification. The first lesson also touches on the differences between saving, investing, and trading. The second lesson includes an awesome Edpuzzle about the stock market, but if you're looking for additional classroom challenges on the same content, FinCap Friday: The Raging Bull is also an outstanding choice. 

The More Complex Investment Types

Once your students know the basic investment types like stocks and bonds, the next few lessons of Semester Course Investing tackle trickier investment products and options. Here's the breakdown: 

• Lesson 6 - Investing in active versus passive funds, and the super popular MOVE activity Let's Make a Mutual Fund
• Lesson 7 - All the funds, including mutual, index, exchange-traded, and target date; the primary component of this lesson is an activity called COMPARE: Types of Investment Funds, best done in groups. 
• Lesson 8 - Includes NGPF Arcade game STAX, but also an essential bit of learning on the difference between a brokerage account and a retirement account. Did you know some teachers like to start their entire unit off with STAX, too, making Lesson 8 the second time their students will play the game? It's fun to compare their strategies as novice investors in Lesson 1 with more advanced strategies once they know more. 
• Lessons 9 and 10 - Focused on retirement, Lesson 9 explains why it's important to invest for retirement (and provides an overview of Social Security) while Lesson 10 covers Roth and traditional IRAs, 401(k) plans, and pensions
• Lesson 11 - Robo-advisors, micro-investing, spare change investing apps... Are any or all of these good ideas for your students? They can try to answer that very question with this lesson's RESEARCH: Online Tools and Apps 

Does this Feel Like Too Much?

Eleven lessons is what we felt was necessary to do ALL these investing topics justice, but we also realize that might feel like a little too much for your students or even for you as the teacher! If you're trying to trim down this unit, you'll likely want to play STAX only once, not twice. We'd recommend keeping lessons 1- 7, and then cutting the last four lessons. You could also take the beginning of lesson 6 (active vs passive), cut the lesson 6 MOVE activity (even though students really DO tend to love the MOVEs), and do the first part of Lesson 7 on mutual and index funds, skipping ETFs and TDFs. 

Have More Time and Want to Go Bolder? 

NGPF has recently released a brand new arcade game called Crypto Craze, which is part of our Cryptocurrency mini unit. That said -- it's important that students know how investing and trading crypto are different, especially when it comes to risk profiles, which is why we recommend teaching Investing before Crypto for sure!

About the Author

Jessica Endlich

When I started working at Next Gen Personal Finance, it's as though my undergraduate degree in finance, followed by ten years as an educator in an NYC public high school, suddenly all made sense.