Ready to shake up your classroom routine? Try pairing NGPF's FinCap Friday with one or more of the strategies below to explore financial current events with your students in a fun and engaging way!

As an educator, you know better than anyone that today's teens are extremely passionate about the issues of the day, whether it's technological shifts in finance, climate change, or social justice. NGPF's FinCap Friday is a great instructional tool that helps you harness that passion by using money-related current events topics to inspire deeper learning! This resource makes your job easier by combining a 5-question quiz with a short video to energize and engage your students with trending topics from top-trusted financial news sources. 

Here are 3 ways that you can implement FinCap Friday in your class right away:

1) MOVE: FinCap Friday

For a simple way to turn any FinCap Friday into a MOVE Activity, label 4 sheets of paper with a letter from A through D. These will be the multiple choice options for each quiz question in the activity. Then, post the non-tech slides version of FinCap Friday on the screen for all your students to see. As each question pops up, have your students move to the corner of the classroom which has the letter that matches the answer choice they believe is correct. Once all students have moved to a spot, you can discuss student ideas and arguments, and then reveal the correct answer. Shout-out to Tori, who developed this idea into an activity for an educator's conference in early 2023!

Alternative option: Add a fifth letter E in the center of the classroom for students who are not sure of the correct answer. The rule is that after hearing arguments from A through D, they will need to make a choice. This helps students practice debate skills, as well as listening comprehension.

2) CREATE: FinCap Friday

Have your students create their own version of FinCap Friday based on a hot topic of their choice! Shout out to educator Brian Johnson in Grand Rapids, MI for this awesome idea. They can spend a few days working on this project by breaking it down into a few phases:

1) Research financial news topics that they care about in major media outlets and social media (if your school allows). Develop their pitch for an episode, including what the topic is, what the top facts related to this topic are, and why it is relevant to the lives of teenagers across the country or globally.

2) Script out the episode to be under 3-4 minutes and be sure to include each of the major facts uncovered during the research phase.

3) Record the episode using a video platform of their choice. Zoom, Flip, Screencastify or other video platform of your choice.

4) Edit and post the video on a shared class folder in Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or other file storage system of your choice.

You may also decide to create a rubric including criteria for success such as: the number of reputable sources, selection of a relevant and timely topic, most important information included, presents information in an interesting and engaging way (questions, stories, images, hooks), remains fact-oriented and does not present opinions, and more!

3) Team Competition

• Sort your students into teams of 5, each student having a number between 1 and 5 assigned to them
• Hand out a white board or large note card to each team for recording answers on their team's board
• Make a copy of the non-tech slides for a FinCap Friday episode of your choice and move all answer key slides to the very end of the presentation
• Post your edited non-tech slides on the screen for all teams to see
• Rule: each player must answer the question independently upon their turn, with no help from their team members
• Move through each question slide, one at a time, pausing for at least 30 seconds to allow each player to jot their answer on their team's board 
• When the timer runs out, have the current players pass their team's board to the next player in their group (Player 1 passes to player 2, and so on)
• When all teams are done, watch the FinCap Friday video with the whole class
• Finally, grade the team boards together

By incorporating FinCap Friday episodes into your weekly routine, you help your students stay informed and engaged with the world of money beyond your classroom! If you haven't utilized this resource yet, here's your chance to get it going.

If you're a longtime user of FinCap Friday, let this post be your call to action for finding a new way to capture your students' attention!

About the Author

Yanely Espinal

Born and raised by Dominican, immigrant parents in Brooklyn, Yanely is a proud product of NYC public schools. She graduated from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in 2007 before going on to receive her bachelor's degree at Brown University in 2011. As a Teach For America corps member, Yanely taught third and fourth grade in Canarsie, Brooklyn. She received her master's degree from Relay Graduate School of Education in 2013. She spends her spare time making YouTube videos about personal finance on her channel, MissBeHelpful. Yanely also loves to dance, sew, paint, listen to podcasts, and babysit her 10 nieces and nephews!