Assignment Ideas

Once your students understand the basics, you can use Banzai to improve financial literacy in many different ways.

• Track Income and Expenses
• Set a Goal
• Track Income and Expenses (Alternate Version)

 

Track Income and Expenses

Assignment Overview

After students have setup their accounts and budgets (jars), ask them to use Banzai to track all of their income and expenses over for the remainder of your course. Periodically, have them report on their experiences and what they learned. Invite students to keep using Banzai even after the class has concluded.

 

Grading

You can use the Teacher's Assistant to track your students' progress. You may wish to require students to enter a certain minimum number of transactions, to make visits to the site with a certain frequency, or both. The Teacher's Assistant shows you the details of your students' transactions, including the date they're acutally entered. This allows you to assess how much and how often they are using the system.

 

Comments

This assignment can be adapted to almost any class where students have at least a little money of their own. Students do not need to have a job or even a bank account, so long as they receive and spend money ocassionally. For younger students or others who do not frequently make purchases, you may wish to lengthen the duration of the assignment. This will ensure that enough time passes for them to accumulate some income and expenses to enter into the system. Students need not complete this assignment in a school computer lab, so long as they have means of accessing the internet outside of school.

 

Set a Goal

Assignment Overview

Students are assigned to record their activities just as in Track Income and Expenses, but with a particular goal in mind. Have your students set the goal in writing at the outset of the assignment. A student can decide, for example, that he wants to save $250.00 for summer camp. Another may wish to accumulate a balance of $500.00 in her Reserves jar. Over the course of the assignment period, have students give periodic progress reports. Ask them to share insights they've gained as they have pursued their goal. If students do not achieve their goals by the end of the assignment period, encourage them to keep pursuing them using Banzai.

 

Grading

You can use the Teacher's Assistant to verify the progress your students are reporting. If you feel it appropriate, you may grade the students on whether they accomplish their goal in the stated time. You can also assess students' work based upon how clearly they expressed the lessons they learned over the course of the assignment.

 

Comments

While this assignment is a bit more involved than Track Income and Expenses, it has the advantage of placing student financial decisions in context. Keeping track of their spending is no longer an end unto itself, but becomes the means by which a student achieves an important goal.

 

Track Income and Expenses (Alternate Version)

Assignment Overview

This assignment is identical to Track Income and Expenses, with only one exception. Before your students start using Banzai to track their own income and expenses, "remove" them from your class using the Teacher's Assistant. (You can read how here.) This will prevent you from seeing the transactions your students enter as they use the system. You can still mandate that students use Banzai for a certain duration of time and it is still appropriate to ask them to report on their experiences in a general fashion.

 

Grading

You can provide students with an explanation of the assignment to take home with them. At the conclusion, have students provide you with a signed note from a parent or guardian indicating that they completed the assignment.

 

Comments

This assignment is appropriate for jurisdictions where privacy concerns prohibit you from viewing your students' personal information.

 Have any questions or comments?