Taxes Lesson Plan: The National Economy

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

This lesson accompanies the BrainPOP topic Taxes, and supports the standard of explaining the ways in which the government pays for the goods and services it provides. Students demonstrate understanding through a variety of projects.

Step 1: ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Display an image of a receipt that includes sales tax, like the one shown below:

Ask students: 

• What is sales tax and why is this on almost everything we purchase?  
• What percentage of the subtotal is the sales tax? 

Step 2: BUILD BACKGROUND

• Read aloud the description on the Taxes topic page. 
• Play the Movie, pausing to check for understanding. 
  

Step 3: APPLY and ASSESS 

Assign Taxes 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 taxes while practicing essential literacy skills with one or more of the following activities. Differentiate by assigning ones that meet individual student needs. 

• Make-a-Movie: Produce a PSA that explains how taxes help provide services that benefit communities.
• Make-a-Map: Make a concept map describing the purpose of collecting taxes from citizens and identify three examples of how taxes can support a community.  
• Creative Coding: Code a learning game challenging players to sort taxes and tax-funded services as federal or state.  

More to Explore

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.