Personal financial literacy is a crucial soft skill for middle school students and is required in many career readiness and elective classes.
As a career readiness curriculum developer, middle school teachers often ask if we provide personal finance lesson plans and activities they can incorporate in the classroom.
While we provide a digital curriculum to teach personal financial literacy among other career readiness and 21st century skills, our solution may not be the best fit for everyone.
iCEV is a full-fledged curriculum system designed to teach dozens of skills such as career exploration, public speaking, communication, customer service, teamwork, professionalism, and more.
But some teachers are only interested in supplemental resources to add to their existing middle school curriculum.
To help you choose the right personal finance lessons for middle school, we’ve put together a list of three popular options.
- Scholastic
- Practical Money Skills
- National Education Association
In this article, you’ll learn about each of these financial literacy lesson plans to help you decide which ones would work best for you and your middle school students.
1. Finance Lessons for Middle School from Scholastic
Scholastic is an excellent resource to find educational materials for a variety of grade levels and topics.
The Scholastic financial literacy lessons for middle school focus on basic concepts, including spending, saving, and financial planning.
This lesson on teaching financial literacy skills will fill a 40-minute class period and comes with a step-by-step lesson plan you can use to seamlessly integrate these lessons with your current curriculum.
Overall, this lesson is direct, easy, and appropriate for middle school grade levels.
2. Practical Money Skills by VISA
As a major credit card company, VISA is in a prime position to educate anyone on the practicalities of personal finance — even those who are too young to have a credit card!
VISA runs a financial education program through their Practical Money Skills brand.
The Practical Money Skills website provides a thorough examination of money skills and credit from a fundamental level, resulting in suitable finance lessons for middle school students.
Specifically, they have 14 lessons available for grades 7 and 8:
- Making Decisions
- Making Money
- The Art of Budgeting
- Living on Your Own
- Buying a Home
- Banking Services
- Credit
- Credit Cards
- Cars and Loans
- The Influence of Advertising
- Consumer Awareness
- Saving and Investing
- In Trouble
- Consumer Privacy
Every lesson is free, and comes with a teacher's guide, student activities, a PowerPoint, and presentation documents.
In the event you use all of these lessons, you’ll have a robust, thorough middle school personal finance curriculum.
You may have reservations about using financial literacy lesson plans from a credit card company. However, Practical Money Skills provides sound and accurate information on how students can handle their personal finances.
If you still have your doubts, you can read through the teacher’s guide provided with every lesson from Practical Money Skills.
Or you can take a look at an educational organization to find financial literacy lesson plans middle school students can learn from.
3. Financial Literacy Lesson Plans for Middle School from the National Education Association
The National Education Association is a teachers' organization that includes millions of individuals across all 50 states.
They aim to lend a helping hand in just about every area of education, including personal financial literacy.
Their roundup of financial literacy resources is a great starting point for any curriculum, especially since the NEA lists out appropriate grade levels.
Their lessons for middle school are focused on two big questions every middle schooler should be able to answer:
- Why do we use money?
- What can I afford?
By answering these two questions, students understand why money is used to standardize trade while placing it in the context of affordability.
The question “What can I afford?” is also answered contextually by focusing on relatable concepts like cell phones.
On top of that, the NEA offers a variety of games that you can use with your middle school students. Games are a great way to drive home the importance of different concepts you teach, especially when it comes to important ideas like personal finance.
With the proper combination of these resources for your classroom, they can be a great addition to your curriculum.
Which Middle School Personal Finance Lessons Are Right for You?
At the end of the day, there is no single "best" option for personal finance lessons for middle school. It all depends on the needs of you, your course, and your students!
Each of these resource can be a great supplement to your existing curriculum.
However, if you need a curriculum that includes personal finance lessons among other career readiness and 21st Century skills, consider iCEV.
iCEV is a comprehensive CTE solution used by thousands of teachers like you to teach career exploration, personal financial literacy, communication skills, and more.
The iCEV curriculum includes pre-built lesson plans, activities, and assessments to keep your students engaged and save you time in the classroom.
Overall, it helps you save time with planning, assessing, and grading student work all while maximizing student understanding and information retention.
To see if iCEV is a good fit for your middle school classroom, visit the Middle School Digital Literacy and Career Exploration page. You'll learn more about the curriculum to help you decide if it's right for your students:
