FREE Teaching Materials

The Great Depression Curriculum
Grade level: 9-12

 History holds many economic lessons. The Great Depression, in particular, is an event that provides the opportunity to teach and learn a great deal about economics— whether you're studying the economic reasons that the Depression took place, the factors that helped it come to an end or the impact on Americans who lived through it. This curriculum is designed to provide teachers with economic lessons that they can share with their students to help them understand this significant experience in history. Click here.

GDP and Pizza
A two-day online course for high-school students

The GDP and Pizza: Economics for Life course is a two-day, online course produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It is designed to help students in civics, economics and other social studies classes grasp the challenging economic content—and to explain why these topics are important for citizens to understand.

The course includes numerous interactive checks for understanding, video clips of a Fed economist explaining concepts and everyday examples that will make sense to students. In addition, students complete a pre- and post-test to assess learning. There is a supplemental activity that can be used in class the day before going to the computer lab which can serve as a prelude to the two-day course. This activity can be used again at the completion of the course as an additional assessment of student learning. Click here.

It's Your Paycheck!
Grade level: 9-12

Designed for use in high school personal finance classes, this curriculum contains three sections—"Know Your Dough," "KaChing!" and "All About Credit." The lessons in each of these sections employ various teaching strategies to engage students so that they have opportunities to apply the concepts being taught. Each lesson includes black-line masters of the handouts and visuals needed to teach the lesson. Each lesson is accompanied by a SMARTTM Notebook file that contains visuals and handouts (whenever practical), along with definition of terms and review questions. Click here.

Cards, Cars and Currency
Grade level: 8-12

This curriculum unit challenges students to become involved in three specific areas of personal finance: credit cards, debit cards and purchasing a car. The unit is divided into five lesson plans. The activities in each lesson plan are designed to address problem-solving, critical-thinking and higher levels of learning, using real-world scenarios. Each lesson is accompanied by a SMARTTM Notebook file that contains visuals and handouts (whenever practical), along with definitions of terms. Click here.

Money Math: Lessons for Life

Let's face it--kids like money. So what better way to help young people embrace math than by teaching them about money? Money Math: Lessons for Life will help students in grades 4-8 apply math skills to some of life's costly challenges including financing a college education, interest on credit cards and paying taxes. Money Math is an integrated teaching resource guide that correlates to the personal finance and mathematics national standards. The book contains four math units, including student activities in which they apply math skills while learning personal finance concepts. Click here.

Crash of 2008

The two PDF documents, Crash of 2008: Cause and Aftermath and Crash of 2008: Housing Crisis, provide background material on what led up to the economic meltdown in Fall 2008 and specifically examine the impact on housing in this country. The documents are resource tools for creating lessons around the economic crisis.

IPO—Investing Pays Off:
It's never too early to start

This FREE curriculum has something for all ages: investing lessons for ages 7-10, 11-14 and 15-18; Young Entrepreneur poster series; PBS program to help youngsters get savvy about money; and Elmo poster and Sesame Street Magazine for ages 3-6.