PERSONAL FINANCE

Hit Common Core standards as students strengthen reading and writing skills to create a variety of roles within the company and design their own toys.

The projects present multi-concept scenarios that lead students to develop a "driving question" that they answer by working through the lesson, which concludes with a culminating presentation and debrief.

In one simulation, students receive “paychecks” and then budget for housing, transportation, insurance, and consumer purchases; their choices are affected by the business cycle and a supply/demand curve.

Each activity consists of a teacher page (lesson summary, objectives, teaching directions, time needed, assessment, extensions, websites) and a student section with two or more reproducible worksheets.

On-the-ground accounts by frustrated realtors and homeowners facing foreclosure dovetail with cogent narration, location footage, and expert analysis by professors, financiers, and economists.

The worldwide financial crisis that began in mid-2007 sets the stage, as Ferguson looks at money and credit as measures of trust; real estate as a means of propping up a shaky economy; the creation of joint-stock companies and stock market bubbles; the importance of bonds; the origin of derivatives, options, and hedge funds; and […]

The authors propose that the ills caused by Big Government should be weighed against the advantages, and espouse fiscal and political conservatism.

Each lesson includes objectives, background information on the cartoons (two per lesson) for teachers, and reproducible pages featuring each cartoon plus discussion questions and activities for students.

Study keys (111 in all) are grouped under 12 main themes and cover such topics as economic systems, money and price, supply and demand, elasticity, indifference curves, competition, oligopoly, Ricardo’s land rent theory, and problems of public choice.