The information located here can help people and organizations understand how to teach financial literacy to children, as is demonstrated by the following case study:

Deirdre Schwartz was co-chair of the PTA at her son’s school. She wanted to know how to teach financial literacy to kids in her community, but wasn’t sure how best to get a program started. Deirdre had provided volunteer support for her son’s sixth-grade classroom, like bringing treats to the Halloween party and helping chaperone field trips. However, she didn’t have any teaching experience or content knowledge about personal finance. She decided she wanted to start teaching financial literacy to middles school students by reaching all the sixth graders at her son’s school – about 75 students in all. Deirdre took her idea to the next PTA meeting, where the sixth-grade teachers quickly got on board and offered to have a lesson presented to all the students assembly-style. Several parents volunteered to help, too. Now Ms. Schwartz just needed to figure out how to decide on learner goals. By doing some research and getting feedback from parents at the PTA, Sarah found out that sixth-grade kids, aged 11-12, would benefit from learning why and how to save money.

Deirdre’s initial goal was to present a one-hour assembly to all the 75 sixth-graders in her son’s school, focusing on savings because the parents had said their children had that interest. Over the long-run, though, she would like to discover more about how to teach financial literacy to kids, and expand the lessons to be presented once a month throughout the school year. Because she just had one hour to start with, Ms. Schwartz set a goal to get the students to Level 2 on Webb’s Depth of Knowledge Scale. That is, she wanted kids both to recall the information they learned, and be able to connect it to actual savings behavior.

Now that Deirdre had clarified her immediate objective and long-term vision, she needed to find out the best delivery mode involved in how to teach financial literacy to children. Based on the learner outcome she wanted to achieve (getting sixth-graders to start saving), she decided that the lesson should be delivered in-person at the school, but also to send home a couple of self-paced parent/child activities. How to teach children about money starts with a solid plan to help keep parents engaged.

Deirdre’s next step in learning how to teach financial literacy to kids was to choose which topics to present. After her conversations with the PTA, she decided to focus the one-hour assembly on subjects associated with savings – how a budget relates to life goals, why saving is important, and the difference between paying interest and earning interest. Based on the age of the students, Deirdre decided she could reach the desired learner outcome of having them start saving by developing parent/child activities that would encourage opening a savings account for the kids.

Then Deirdre needed to find a skilled educator who was capable to present to the sixth-grade assembly – someone qualified in both personal finance content and how to teach financial literacy to children. At the next PTA meeting, she asked the group for recommendations, and found out that one of the sixth-grade teachers, Mrs. Myers, had recently graduated from the NFEC’s Certified Financial Education Instructor program. Mrs. Myers said she would be happy to begin teaching financial literacy in schools and would lead the 6th grade class.

Now Ms. Schwartz needed curriculum materials for how to teach financial literacy to kids, resources age-appropriate for sixth graders with practical lessons and savings-related activities. She needed a package with modular components that could either be used as-is, or adapted to send home as parent/child activities. She accomplished her goals to conduct a one-hour assembly on savings, plus get parents involved in their kids’ financial education, by choosing a curriculum with a flexible, modular design and just-in-time learning components designed specifically for youth.

On the day of the assembly, 70 sixth-graders found out how well Deirdre had learned how to teach financial literacy to children, with an average improvement of 25% on a brief pre- and post-test. Ms. Schwartz and Mrs. Myers distributed the take-home activities and had students agree to bring the completed activities back to their respective classes within one week to earn extra credit.

When Deirdre followed up with the sixth-grade teachers at the next PTA meeting, she learned that almost all the students (68 out of 70; 97%) had brought back the activities showing that they had opened savings accounts with their parents. Sarah wrote a report ‘teaching young adults about money‘ to show the school principal, with the hope that this demonstrated success would garner his support for expanding the program to cover more financial education topics throughout the school year.