Planning guide
What each part needs before it, what to cut when the period runs short, what students reliably get wrong, and which parts a substitute can run cold.
What students need before they start
Less than people expect. There is no algebra, no formula to memorize, and nothing that needs a graphing calculator.
- Percentages. Reading 5% as "five for every hundred" and taking a percentage of a number. This is the only real prerequisite.
- Multiplying repeatedly. Not exponent notation. A student who can multiply by 1.05 four times in a row has everything Module 2 needs; the notation is never required.
- Reading a table. Modules 4 and 5 both hang on published tables, and finding a row and a column is all the skill it takes.
Everything else is arithmetic the course does for them. The point is never the calculation; it is whether they can tell when an answer is the wrong size, which is what the estimation section in Module 1 is for and why the problems accept anything within 25%.
Time, and what to cut
Every part is built to fit a period. The honest version is that a 50-minute period with attendance, settling and packing up is closer to 40 minutes of work, so most parts want a little trimming rather than none. The column on the right is what to drop first.
| Part | Runs | Cut this first |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Part 1 | Comfortable | Nothing. This is the lightest part and the one that sets the habit of guessing first. |
| 1 Part 2 | Comfortable | The degree calculator can be demonstrated once rather than driven by everyone. |
| 2 Part 1 | Comfortable | Nothing. This is the argument the whole course rests on. |
| 2 Part 2 | Tight | The minimum-payment panel is the one to keep. The inflation panel can move to homework. |
| 3 Part 1 | Comfortable | The sequence-of-returns demonstration can be shown from the front. |
| 3 Part 2 | Over | Three heavy panels. Run the cash panel and the panic panel; the mixing panel is the one to drop. |
| 4 | Comfortable | The emergency-fund calculator, if the deductible one has already landed. They teach the same trade. |
| 5 Part 1 | Over | Nine questions where every other part has seven. Set the last two as homework. |
| 5 Part 2 | Tight | The retrieval opener, if you are teaching Part 1 and Part 2 back to back. |
| 6 (simulation) | 2 to 3 hours | Use the shorter run. It keeps the shape of a life and fits one period. |
| 7 Part 1 | Comfortable | Nothing. |
| 7 Part 2 | Tight | Nothing, and protect the last section. It turns the course's own test on the course. |
What they get wrong, and what it means
These are the errors worth stopping for. Each one is a belief rather than a slip, which is why simply giving the right answer does not shift it.
Guessing far too low, every time, in Module 1
Almost everyone does, and the low guess is the interesting one. It is not innumeracy: people reason linearly because most things in life are linear, and compounding is the exception they have not met. Do not correct it quickly. Collect the guesses on the board before revealing anything, and come back to that list at the end of Module 2. The gap between the two is the lesson.
Adding the price and the growth together
"It cost $500 plus $856 of growth, so $1,356 plus $500." The page says not to and they do it anyway. It comes from reading the two figures as two separate losses rather than one figure shown in two parts. Ask what they would be holding if they had not spent it. There is only one answer, and it is one number.
"So saving is always better than spending"
The commonest wrong conclusion in the whole course, and it looks like success. The course never argues it, and Module 1 says so outright, but a student who has just seen a $1,356 figure hears an instruction. Watch for it in the written answers, where it appears as a slogan they held before starting. The four-question set at the end of the simulation is designed to surface it.
Treating the average return as the return they will get
Module 3's whole subject, and it survives the module in a lot of students. The tell is a written answer that says "it grows 5% a year". The order returns arrive in is the part that does not fit the intuition, and the demonstration is worth running twice with the same numbers in a different order.
Reading the simulation as a game to win
The ending net worth is the largest number on the screen, so it gets read as a score. The end screen refuses to rank and the teacher page refuses "who did best" as a discussion question, and students will still ask. The most useful counter is to find the highest net worth in the room and read out that life's wellbeing, then find a low one that was happy. Both exist in any class of thirty.
Assuming everyone started where they started
The simulation deals a starting hand: a free roof, a parent's health plan, help with tuition, or none of it. Students compare ending balances without it, because the numbers do not announce it. The result line records what each life started with, and the comparison is dishonest without it. This is the single most important thing to say out loud before they compare.
If you are not there
Some parts need somebody who knows the argument. Some do not, because the page carries the teaching and the questions mark themselves.
- Safe for a substitute, cold: Module 1 Part 1, Module 4, and Module 7 Part 1. Each is self-contained, each explains itself on the page, and none of them depends on a discussion happening.
- Workable, with the answer keys to hand: Module 1 Part 2, Module 2 Part 1, Module 5 Part 1.
- Do not leave for a substitute: Module 3 Part 2 and Module 7 Part 2. Both turn on an argument that needs someone able to push back, and Module 7 Part 2 ends by criticizing the course itself, which needs a person in the room who can take that seriously.
- The simulation: fine to leave, and set a single life number for the class so they have something to talk about when you are back.
A substitute needs three things and no more: the URL, the answer keys, and the sentence "their answers save in the browser and nothing is uploaded anywhere."
The first ten minutes
Worth getting right, because two things go wrong in nearly every first lesson with this course.
- Say that guessing badly is the exercise. Every part opens by asking for a guess before anything is explained. Students who think a wrong guess is a wrong answer will read ahead for the number, and then the lesson does not work. Tell them the guess is not marked and cannot be.
- Say where the work is saved, on the first day. It saves in that browser on that machine. On a shared cart, a student who moves seats loses the lot. If your machines are shared, have them download the record at the end of every period rather than at the end of the unit.