Elementary: 7th & 8th Grade Financial Literacy Concepts
EARN, SAVE, SPEND, GROW
Students will explore how their habits, feelings, and environment influence their money decisions. They will learn about earning, saving, and spending money wisely, including understanding interest, loans, and insurance. Most importantly, students will develop the skills to create a personal financial plan that covers budgeting, saving, investing, and protecting themselves from financial risks.
BIG IDEAS
- The Human Side of Money: Learn how your feelings, habits, and the world around you can affect the way you use and manage money. Find out why it's important to make smart choices about how you spend and save, and what it means to be responsible with your money.
- Earning Money: Discover how your job, your education, and things happening in the economy can impact how much money you make. Learn about starting your own business and how saving and investing can help you plan for your future, including things like retirement.
- Spending & Saving: Learn how to save your money, understand how interest can help your savings grow, discover different ways to keep your money safe, know why insurance matters, and see how taxes can affect the amount of money you get to spend or save.
- Debt and Loans: Learn what it means to borrow money, how credit works, and the different kinds of loans people can get. Find out how borrowing money usually costs extra because of something called interest, and why it's important to understand how interest makes you pay back more than you borrowed.
- Financial Planning and Security: Learn how to use what you know about money to plan for your own life, like setting goals for saving and spending. Also, find ways to keep your money and personal information safe from scams and people trying to steal them.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
- Describe how people's approaches toward money change over time and recognize that lifestyle habits influence the ways people manage their money.
- Identify what stewardship is and recognize the importance of managing money, both individually and as a group.
- Explain how effort and time put into work will lead to greater rewards, both intrinsic and extrinsic.
- Describe the steps, costs, and benefits of starting a business.
- Explore the concept of supply and demand and its impact on wages.
- Understand the importance of diversified investments.
- Explain how student loans can be helpful, even though they are considered debt.
- Explain what taxes are and why they must be paid.
- Understand the concept of retirement planning.
- Explain how saving allows the value of money to increase because of interest, and other types of investments can allow the value to grow even more.
- Calculate simple and compound interest using formulas.
- Analyze the impact of interest rates on savings and loans.
- Examine various forms of insurance and their purpose.
- Describe different types of investments and explain how they can provide a more efficient way to save money.
- Evaluate different types of loans (e.g., student loans, mortgages).
- Explain how credit history is a record of both positive and negative debt and money management.
- Identify factors that affect the overall cost of a loan, explain how accumulated interest and principal can change with different types of loans, and calculate interest payments for credit cards and loans.
- Create a personal financial plan that includes budgeting, saving, investing, and risk protection.
- Learn what identity theft and financial fraud are and why it’s important to protect your money and information.
Vocabulary
Lifestyle
Income
Debt
Revenue
Budget
Loan
Asset
Credit Score
Savings Account
Liability
Overdraft
Expenses
Net Worth
Direct Deposit
Credit
Checking Account
Investment
Predatory Lending
Career
Interest
Risk
Job
Interest
Insurance
Community Connection
College and Career Awareness
College and Career Awareness Standards
Financial Literacy Concept:
The Human Side of Money
Standards:
- Strand 1, Standard 1: Explore the relationship of individual interests, skills, and aptitudes for future academic and career goals.
- Strand 1, Standard 1, Indicator D: Investigate how career choices relate to aspirations and future standard of living.
- Strand 2, Standard 2: Identify, develop, and demonstrate personal characteristics that promote responsibility, dependability, productivity, high-quality work, and self-initiative.
Financial Literacy Concept:
Earning Money
Standards:
- Strand 1, Standard 2: Explore and participate in the process of preparing to apply for an entry-level job in relation to future academic and career goals.
- Strand 1, Standard 2, Indicator C: Evaluate career availability based on the career outlook information.
- Strand 1, Standard 1, Indicator C: Compare the relationship between education and training for future career options.
Financial Literacy Concept:
Spending & Saving
Standards:
- Strand 4, Standard 3: Students will explore various financial opportunities and risks associated with future academic and career goals.
- Strand 4, Standard 3, Indicators A, B, C, & D: Define: Savings, Tuition, Financial aid, Scholarships, Grants, Student loans, and Work study.
- Strand 4, Standard 3, Indicator E: Explore ways to avoid student loan debt (e.g.,
saving, applying for FAFSA, applying for scholarships).
Financial Literacy Concept:
Debt and Loans
Standards:
- Strand 4, Standard 3, Indicator B & D: Define Debt and Student Loans.
- Strand 4, Standard 3, Indicator F: Discuss the long-term impact of student loan debt.
Financial Literacy Concept:
Financial Planning and Security
Standards:
- Strand 1, Standard 1: Explore the relationship of individual interests, skills, and aptitudes for future academic and career goals.
- Strand 4, Standard 2: Students will strengthen an individual Plan for College and Career Readiness (PCCR) connected to academic and career interests.
- Strand 4, Standard 2, Indicator B: Create a rigorous program of study for middle/junior high school, high school, and postsecondary opportunities.
- Strand 4, Performance Objectives: Students will begin to create a portfolio that includes a career assessment and insights and reflections related to preparation aligned to the PCCR.
Mathematics Standards
Financial Literacy Concept:
Spending & Saving
Standards:
- Strand: RATIOS AND PROPORTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS Standard 7.RP.3: Use proportional relationships to solve multi-step ratio and percent problems. Examples: simple interest, tax, markups and markdowns, gratuities and commissions, fees, percent increase and decrease, percent error.
- Strand: EXPRESSIONS AND EQUATIONS Standard 7.EE.2: Understand that rewriting an expression in different forms in a problem context can shed light on the problem... For example, $a+0.05a=1.05a$ means that "increase by 5%" is the same as "multiply by 1.05.".
- Strand: EXPRESSIONS AND EQUATIONS Standard 7.EE.3: Solve multi-step real-life and mathematical problems posed with positive and negative rational numbers in any form... For example: If a woman making $25 an hour gets a 10% raise, she will make an additional $1/10$ of her salary an hour, or $2.50, for a new salary of
$27.50.
Financial Literacy Concept:
Debt and Loans
Standards:
- Strand: EXPRESSIONS AND EQUATIONS Standard 7.EE.4: Use
variables to represent quantities in a real-world or mathematical problem and construct simple equations and inequalities to solve problems.
Financial Literacy Concept:
Learning Outcomes (Calculations)
Standards:
- Strand: RATIOS AND PROPORTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS Standard 7.RP.3: Use proportional relationships to solve multi-step ratio and percent problems. Examples: simple interest, tax, markups and markdowns, gratuities and commissions, fees, percent increase and decrease, percent error.
Financial Literacy Concept:
The Human Side of Money
Standards:
- Strand: MATHEMATICAL PRACTICES 8.MP: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them; Reason abstractly and quantitatively31; Model with mathematics.
Financial Literacy Concept:
Earning Money
Standards:
- Strand: EXPRESSIONS AND EQUATIONS Standard 8.EE.5: Graph proportional relationships, interpreting the unit rate as the slope of the graph. Compare two different proportional relationships represented in different ways... to determine which of two moving objects has greater speed (as a comparison for rate of earning).
Financial Literacy Concept:
Learning Outcomes (Calculations)
Standards:
- Strand: EXPRESSIONS AND EQUATIONS Standard 8.EE.7: Solve linear equations and inequalities in one variable... with rational number coefficients.
- Strand: FUNCTIONS Standard 8.F.4: Construct a function to mode`d initial value of a linear function in terms of the situation it models.
English Language Arts Standards
Financial Literacy Concept:
The Human Side of Money
Standards:
- Strand 1: SPEAKING AND LISTENING Standard 7-8.SL.1: Respond thoughtfully in democratic discussions that involve decision-making.
Financial Literacy Concept:
Financial Planning and Security
Standards:
- Strand 1: SPEAKING AND LISTENING Standard 7-8.SL.2: Evaluate the credibility of multiple sources of information presented in various formats and mediums to make informed decisions.
- Strand 2: READING Standard 7-8.R.13: Evaluate an argument and specific claims in a text, assessing the validity of key statements by examining whether the supporting evidence is relevant and sufficient.
- Strand 3: WRITING Standard 7-8.W.4: Conduct short research projects to craft an argument, answer a question, or provide an analysis.
- Strand 3: WRITING Standard 7-8.W.4.a: Gather, assess, and use information from credible sources on the topic.
- Strand 3: WRITING Standard 7-8.W.1: Write arguments to support claims with logical reasoning, relevant evidence from accurate and credible sources, and provide a conclusion.
Social Studies Standards
Financial Literacy Concept:
Earning Money
Standards:
- Utah Studies Standard 1.3: Students will explain the economic activity of a prehistoric and/or historic American Indian tribal community by using basic economic concepts, including supply, demand, trade, and scarcity.
- US History I Standard 2.1: Students will identify the economic, social, and geographic factors that influenced the colonization efforts.
- US History I Standard 6.3: Students will identify the economic and geographic impact of the early Industrial Revolution's new inventions and transportation methods.
Financial Literacy Concept:
Spending & Saving
Standards:
- Utah Studies Standard 3.3: Students will describe the effects of events, movements, and innovations on Utah's economic development, such as the organized labor movement, farming and industrial improvements, the World Wars, and the Great Depression.
- Utah Studies Standard 3.1: Students will identify the civic virtues and principles codified by the Utah Constitution. (Paying taxes is a civic responsibility).
Financial Literacy Concept:
Financial Planning and Security
Standards:
- Utah Studies Standard 5.3: Students will use data regarding the key components of Utah's economy to make recommendations for sustainable development (applies to financial planning).
- US History I Standard 4.3: Students will use historic case studies and current events to trace how and explain why the rights, liberties, and responsibilities of citizens have changed over time (relates to rights/responsibilities regarding money and government).
Additional Resources:
- Finance In the Classroom Additional 6th Grade Activities
- Financial Literacy Vocabulary
- EconEdLink Education Personal Financial Resources: 6-8
- Federal Reserve Teaching Resources - Middle School
- Smart Path All-Access Learning: Enabling Students with Developmental Disabilities
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