Tailor instruction to students’ specific needs

Promising Practice: Tailor instruction to students’ specific needs

Everyone can benefit from financial education, but not everyone faces the same financial situations and decisions. A recent survey on financial wellness, published by Prudential, shows that the financial experiences of individuals differ dramatically depending on a number of factors, including culture, socioeconomic status, and family background.

You know your students. Understanding how to make personal finance relevant can go far in helping them create and achieve their own financial goals.

These resources might spark ideas for how to tailor teaching to students:

Project-based learning

Engaging students through projects is a great way to transfer knowledge and get them thinking critically about how personal finance applies to their own lives.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta created a curriculum based on 11 projects that students can complete throughout the semester.
GFLEC created 20 micro-credentials, each with a specific pedagogical approach and financial topic. Exploring Your Future Career Opportunities, for example, incorporates project-based learning.
Ask your students to prepare presentations on five to ten financial topics that interest them. The University of North Texas has students do personal finance presentations in the community. The students receive feedback and work with their mentor to improve their skills and content.
Junior Achievement put together Finance Park, consisting of 13 in-class lessons for grades 7–12 that may end in a visit to a Junior Achievement site—a finance park—where students can apply what they’ve learned in a budgeting simulation.
GFLEC and Girl Rising partnered to create financial education lesson plans. These financial literacy lessons aim to teach students the many ways education and finances are related.

Problem-based learning

While working in a cooperative environment, students apply theory to real-world situations and to their own lives.

Present a case study of a real-world problem, such as student loans, with this lesson plan from GFLEC. Then give students challenges to address and decisions to make.
Facilitate a discussion among students using these case studies from NextGen Personal Finance.

Mindset

Consider how socioeconomic status may influence the mindset of your students.

Ruby Payne created a study guide called Bridges Out of Poverty that explores different mindsets among economic classes. Explore this worksheet on the different financial challenges and realities of impoverished, middle-class, and wealthy individuals.
You can play Spent, provided by the Urban Ministries of Durham, an interactive online game about surviving poverty and homelessness.