Interest Lesson Plan: Economics

*Click to open and customize your own copy of the Interest Lesson Plan.

This lesson accompanies the BrainPOP topic Interest, and supports the standard of analyzing types of interest rates and their impact on the consumer. Students demonstrate understanding through a variety of projects.

Step 1: ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Ask students: 

• Why might someone save their money in a bank rather than keep it at home?

Step 2: BUILD BACKGROUND

• Read aloud the description on the Interest topic page. 
• Play the Movie, pausing to check for understanding. 
• Assign students different Related Reading articles. Partner them with someone who read a different article to share what they learned with each other.
  

Step 3: APPLY and ASSESS 

Assign Interest Challenge and Quiz, prompting students to apply essential literacy skills while demonstrating what they learned about this topic.

Step 4: DEEPEN and EXTEND

Students express what they learned about interest while practicing essential math and literacy skills with one or more of the following activities. Differentiate by assigning ones that meet individual student needs. 

• Make-a-Movie: Create a movie that answers this question: What is the relationship between percentages and interest? 
• Make-a-Map: Make a concept map comparing and contrasting simple and compound interest. 
• Creative Coding: Code a math problem that involves solving for interest.  
• Primary Source: Read an article about loan sharking and cite evidence to answer accompanying questions.  

More to Explore

Shady Sam: Players take on the role of loan sharks, using strategies to maximize their profits at the expense of their borrowers in this game. 

Economics Unit: Continue to build understanding around economic concepts with more BrainPOP topics.

Teacher Support Resources:

• Pause Point Overview: Video tutorial showing how Pause Points actively engage students to stop, think, and express ideas. 
• Learning Activities Modifications: Strategies to meet ELL and other instructional and student needs.
• Learning Activities Support: Resources for best practices using BrainPOP.