Daily Learning Plan Math of Finance A Investment Principles Unit

(3 Weeks) Day 1: The beginning of this unit details the importance of investments and how they relate to savings. The first three podcasts will be used with this introductory material as students understand how saving and investing differs. Students will be given the Investments Pre-Test today to gauge their understanding of investments. The test consists of 25 multiple choice questions in five different areas that the unit focuses on. The pre-assessment contains 5 questions each from the following areas: investment vocabulary, time value of money, securities associations, investment trending, and securities transactions. Students should be told that the pre-assessment will have no effect on their grade for the unit and will be used to gauge their knowledge before the unit begins. After taking the Exam students will view Podcast 1 Choosing to Save. This podcast will give students an introduction to the differences between saving and investing and the importance of both. Students will then be asked to reflect on the podcast with the following questions: What is an investment and why should we learn about them? Have a class discussion that includes what students think investing is and why it is important.

Day 2: Today will begin with a vocabulary activity. This unit has a significant amount of vocabulary. Students will benefit from greater vocabulary awareness in advance of instruction and reinforcement throughout the lessons. Students should create a: know, want to know, and learned (KWL) chart. Students will choose ten vocabulary words from the Investments Vocabulary List handout and record these words in the first column of the chart. Students will then rate each vocabulary word according to their current understanding in the second, third and fourth column of the chart. During and after instruction students can add and change information from the chart. The goal is to replace all of the check marks and minus signs with a plus sign by the conclusion of the lesson. Students will then be given a note taking guide. A note-taking guide will be introduced and given out to students to facilitate listening during a power point presentation and lecture. The lecture is interactive and allows students to fill out appropriate material on the guide as well as calculate and self-evaluate their progress as they work their way through the

guide. The presentation includes slides in the following categories: What is investing?, Rate of Return, Risk versus Return, Investment Tools, Investment Philosophy and Portfolio Diversification, Taxation, Rule of 72, and a Summary/Reflection. After introducing the note taking guide, Podcast 2 Start Saving will be shown. This podcast will help students understand the various ways in which saving can take place. It is important to convey that saving should be automatic and that if applied to every paycheck it can be done easily without much sacrifice.

Day 3: Day 3 begins with the showing of Podcast 3 Time Value of Money. This podcast explores the relationship between time, interest, and amount of money invested. By watching this podcast students will have a better understanding of how TVOM helps investors build wealth. The time value of money magic activity will then be started. This activity serves as a demonstration of the time value of money and is used to help explain to students the difference between simple and compound interest, and how to calculate each. The demonstration starts with a bag of jelly beans that have the eight standard colors of jelly beans: orange, yellow, purple, red, pink, green, white and black. Two clear bowls are used to hold the jelly beans during the demonstration. The jelly beans are color coded and divided into the following numbers. Color 1 = Principal (20), Color 2 = Year 1 (1 jelly bean), Color 3 = Year 5 (3 jelly beans), Color 4 = Year 10 (6 jelly beans), Color 5 = Year 15 (8 jelly beans), Color 6 = Year 20 (11 jelly beans). The chart used corresponds with the following colors: white = 10, orange = 1, purple = 3, yellow = 6, green =, red =11. The demonstration begins when the teacher asks students can money magically grow? The teacher then explains to students that although it is not magic, money can grow on its own if the time value of money is utilized. Ten jelly beans are placed in each container, each one representing money saved at a bank or credit union. The teacher then explains to students that each jelly bean represents $10. This represents a $100 initial savings amount. The teacher then adds one jelly bean of a different color into another bank bowl. The graph is started and the first animation explains that $7 in interest was earned over the first year, so the savings is now worth $107.00. The jelly bean added to the initial savings represents this $7 rounded up. Three jelly beans are added of a different color, then 6 jelly beans are added, then 8, then 11. The demonstration can continue on and on adding more jelly beans to year 50 but 257 jelly beans are needed for the extended demonstration. The students are then asked to reflect on what they have learned and answer the following questions: What would have happened if you had added to the investment every year? What would you have done with $100 instead of save it? Is that purchase worth more than $2,945.70? The final assessment question which should initiate a class discussion is: which is worse spilling the beans or never having them? The class discussion should encompass why it is better to have savings and spend it then to never have started saving.

Day 4: Today starts with a great activity that will help students understand the payoffs related to taking various levels of risk. (Performance Task 1: Role the die!). This performance task introduces the concepts of investment risk versus potential return and investment philosophy. The idea is that students are able to Your task is to guess the outcome of a series of dice rolls. The challenge is to guess the number that the die will land on. You will be given multiple guesses, but they will cost you potential candy wins. This task will help us better understand the relationship between risk and return. Students will get in groups of 3 or 4. The task will be given to students and can be found in the Stage 2 planning document. An excerpt follows that gives student directions. You are to assign one group member to be the referee. The referee will be in charge of rolling the die, ensuring participants are giving honest answers, and passing out candies after every round. There will be five rounds of play. Before every round you will guess as many numbers as they want (1-6). The number(s) chosen should be marked with an X on the appropriate round of the Risk versus Return Chart. After all group members have selected their number(s), the referee will roll the die. If one of the numbers chosen is rolled, group members will receive candies in return for a correct guess. However, the number of candies received is determined by the number of guesses made. The winnings chart determines the number of candies won for each guess. After each round, group members will record the number of guesses made, the number rolled by the die, and the number of candies won. Two activity charts are provided for this task and the activity will be conducted twice so that the referee can be rotated and results can be compared between both rounds. Students will then be shown Podcast 4 Intro to Investing. Introduction to Investing. This podcast introduces investing from the perspective of its difference from saving. Students are introduced to the idea that investing involves buying assets. The podcast gives an introduction to risk and helps students ground their experience in the risk vs. return activity in a meaningful way. The relationship of risk and return is examined and discussed. Students should then be asked the following questions: How do saving and investing differ? What is the relationship between risk and return? How is investing still considered purchasing or buying? Day 5: Today students will be given the Investing Math Worksheet. The investing math worksheet provides a series of questions that evaluates a students understanding of stock metrics. Calculations include: ROR, TVOM, savings rate, ratios. These word problems help students understand real world examples of setting savings and investment goals. Students will then be given an opportunity to show what they have learned this week by creating an Active Learning and Review Tool. Students will create a layered, color-coded, graphic organizer regarding the concepts presented in the lesson. The foldable will include

information from each of the sections of the presentation. This gives students an opportunity to organize their thoughts and reflect on the major aspects of the unit. Students are instructed to share their foldable with another student and discuss the major take away with them before submitting it for grading. Day 6: Week 2 starts with a continued discussion of risk versus return. Students will be exploring the Risk Pyramid and creating a Tolerance Mobile. Students will be given the opportunity to view and discuss the risk pyramid which has the following levels: 1-Financial Security (cash, CDs, savings accounts), 2-Safety & Income (bonds, treasury securities), 3-Growth (blue chip growth stocks, mutual funds), 4-Speculation (options, commodities, junk bonds). Students will have the opportunity to describe each level and will ascertain that low risk = low return and subsequently high risk = high return. The risk pyramid can be tailored to different groups of students depending on the intelligence level of the students involved to include more or less detail about specific risks and investments that would qualify for inclusion in those levels. Podcast 5 Investment Tools will be shown. This podcast will give students an introduction to the various types of investment tools. These tools can help students in their pursuit of investments. A discussion should take place after the podcast in order to compare and contrast the types of investment tools introduced in the podcast. Day 7: Day 7 Starts with an activity called $500 bill. Students will be given a faux $500 bill and will be asked to invest the money in one of the levels of the risk pyramid. They will have to explain why they invested their money in a particular level. The beauty of this activity is that there is no wrong answer, just inadequate reasoning. Each student will have a different risk tolerance level and will be able to explain why they were risk averse, risk seeking, or somewhere in the middle. This allows students to reflect on their individual tolerances and is a great spring board for a discussion on calculated risk and stock investing which they will learn in this very lesson. Students will then participate in an activity that has them further explore the investment tools they learned about in Day 6 through watching Podcast 5. Students will need to access the internet to find three different products for each investment tool. Websites used will be google investments, yahoo finance, forbes, investopedia, and any other site that is allowed through the internet filter. Day 8:

The Stock Exchance conceptualization activity will start day 8. This activity is a hands-on role-play skit that allows students to understand how the NYSE works to help investors purchase stocks. The skit follows the order from the originating broker to the floor trader who actually purchases the stock from other investors. This gives students a great idea of how the transaction flows and why stock exchanges are necessary to help keep the checks and balances of the system. This is a great activity to help transition into a complex discussion of regulatory bodies and their importance in securities investing. Students will then be introduced to a supply and demand activity. Three candy bars are brought into the classroom. One candy bar is very popular and most students would want it. One of the other candy bars is not very popular and most students wouldnt want it. It is then explained to the students that the candy bars represent three different stocks. Each student is given $100 in play money. Students will then be asked which candy bar they want and the number of students that reply will be written on the board. It is then stated that X number of students wanted each candy bar (demand) but that there is only one available (supply). Students are then asked how to solve the dilemma of how to fairly determine who should get each candy bar. Examples of suggestions may include: first come first serve, lottery, money, need, auction, sharing. The students are then told that they are the buyers and the teacher is the seller of the candy bars. The seller would like to receive as much money as possible for the candy bar and therefore is going to auction it off to the highest bidder. Each candy bar is auctioned off and the price is written on the board. The candy bar with the most demand should go for the highest price (students may even pool their money to buy it). A classroom discussion ensues that includes how the candy bar with the most demand went for the highest selling price just like the transactions which occur on the NYSE floor. Day 9: Today starts with watching Podcast 6 Advanced Considerations. This podcast explores issues related to investing such as: investment philosophy, portfolio diversification, buying & selling investments, taxation, and employee-sponsored accounts. This podcast explores topics that have previously been discussed and takes them to an advanced level. Students will need to have a debriefing after the podcast to help them digest the information presented to them. Questions to help facilitate the discussion include: How does your investment philosophy help direct investment choices? How does diversification help mitigate risk? How can you buy and sell investments? When do you need a stock broker? How do investments affect taxes? Are employee-sponsored accounts the best type of investment vehicles? How do employee benefits affect investment decisions? Key concepts of the unit will then be discussed in the review roundup, a round-table style discussion. These include: stocks, the relationship between risk and return, the two types of stocks, the different stock classifications, what things to look for when researching a stock (metrics), what each element of a stock quote represents, the three indicators which

represent how the stock market is doing overall, how stocks are bought and sold, what the regulatory bodies do and how they regulate the securities industry. Day 10: The roundup review served as preparation for the summative assessment for the unit. This assessment is designed to be a summative assessment to this portion of the unit. The assessment is written for a higher level of thinking but also includes step questions and reflections that allow access points for various levels of learning. This allows different points of entry for students with various intelligences. Day 11: Week 3 focuses heavily on performance tasks and is the real work session behind the unit. In this week students will take the initiative to develop their own portfolio of stocks and track the performance of these stocks in several activities. The week begins with a simulation of starting a company and issuing stock. Day 11 begins with the assigning of a major project entitled Business or Bust. The students task is to incorporate a business so that its stock can be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The goal is to be well capitalized and have positive financial indicators so that your stock meets the listing criteria for the NYSE. The articles of incorporation will include this data which will be presented to the class. Each group will form the board of directors of a new corporation. Each group will have to name their company and create a short list of bylaws of incorporation. Students must note what business they are in (sector) as well as any products and services that they sell. Students will formulate and present this information at the next board meeting. The clients are the investors and potential shareholders in the new corporation. Students must work in groups to convince them that the company is well valued and that they have followed the listing criteria and are ready to list the corporation as a publicly traded company on the NYSE. Each group will create a listing package that includes the financials of your corporation and shows the financial stability of the company by having positive P/E ratios, EPS, and beta. The package will be created in order to convince the investors and potential shareholders that the company is ready to be incorporated. Each group will be judged by the rubric presented to them. The presentation should include all aspects of the criteria listed in the rubric and will include feedback given by members of other groups. Day 12: Students will have an opportunity to speak with an investment advisor on day 12 as a guest speaker from Wells Fargo Advisors will be invited to speak to the class. A guest speaker will come to the classroom to discuss the concept of investing with the students. This individual is a securities broker and registered financial advisor. Students will use the

Guest Speaker Form to develop questions before the speaker has arrived to make sure to engage the speaker with meaningful questions in order to get the most out of the experience of having a guest speaker come to speak. The form includes sections: Before, During, After so that students can have a full view of the information shared by the guest speaker. If time allows, students will respond to the following prompt: Describe three tools to help analyze a stocks investment potential. How do these tools help better understand the metrics involved in evaluating securities? Days 13 & 14: Students will research and buy securities inside a virtual portfolio. The challenge will be to find ten different securities that they are willing to purchase and monitor. After three weeks they will take the data from the virtual stock exchange to create a three minute presentation about the portfolio they have built on the virtual stock exchange. Students will have a total of $10,000 to invest and will be able to invest any portion of that into each of the stocks. Students will develop a risk profile for each stock that includes the stocks: EPS, P/E ratio, beta, market capitalization, and any other metric they would like to include. Students are to research stocks using various sources of stock data including, but not limited to: www.finance.google.com, www.finance.yahoo.com, www.wsj.com, www.smartmoney.com, and www.investopedia.com. Students will need to be able to defend their stock picks during their presentation. Students will purchase ten stocks using the $10,000 given to them by the virtual stock exchange. The target audience is any potential client of the student. They are not necessarily selling investments during the presentation, but are selling themselves! Students will be assessed on the ability to choose investments. No one can predict how stocks will perform but they must be able to defend their choices, using the sources of investment information, to encourage investors to use the student as their investment advisor. The challenge involves dealing with thousands of possible stocks. Students will need to be careful about buying just the big brands and focus on finding stocks that are undervalued, growing rapidly, or producing steady dividend returns. They must use the tools at your disposal to find the best investments. Students will create a three minute presentation using the presentation software/materials of their choice in order to convince potential investors to use their services as a financial advisor. The presentation will include information about why the stocks were chosen, their metric data (P/E, EPS, beta, valuation), how they performed over the three week period, as well as the sources of information. Care will need to be taken in selecting stocks as students will need to defend choices with metric data including exchange information as this can be an important factor in the event your investments perform poorly over the three week period. The work will be judged by the rubric presented to them at the beginning of the assignment. The presentation must meet the technical standards located in the rubric. The student will ultimately be graded on their ability to defend investment choices, not the performance of those investments, although that data is also an important part of the presentation.

Day 15: The conclusion of this unit involves students developing a model portfolio. Students will complete a self-evaluation that details the students risk profile and investment style. Each student will develop a model portfolio that does not include actual stocks but the classifications and metrics that would be present in the perfect portfolio of the student. After completion of this unit, students will have a firm understanding of investment principles. The unit was developed in a way that allows students to have interactive and hands on instruction. The very nature of the activities helps vary the instruction and assessment to accommodate all levels of learners.