Are You a Teacher Help Your Students Learn about Money with The Stock Exchange Game

Copyright (c) 2010 John Howell

If you're a teacher, you know it can be difficult to teach your students the value of money. What better way to get them interested in learning about money and investing than with the stock exchange game!

These games are free online and encourage healthy competition between students as they build their fantasy portfolios and watch their money grow.

Here's how you can get started on your own stock exchange game.

First, choose a stock exchange game website. Simply search for stock exchange games online and find one that will allow you to set each student up with his or her own free account. These stock exchange games will usually give participants a set amount of money to play with.

Students can then log on at home or at the school computer lab to begin paper trading the same day. Invite your students to pick stocks they care about to further peak their interest. Young students might like stocks like Nickelodeon (through Viacom) or McDonalds while older kids might get a kick out of watching Starbucks or Google's stock progress.

Once your students have logged on and started paper trading on the stock exchange game, the site should track their progress for them (and for you). You'll be able to access charts and graphs that show each student's investing progress over time. You can use this as a teaching tool to instruct each student on where their money is growing.

Ask your students if they're happy with their progress and ask how they think they can make their progress better. Even an instance like an underperforming stock or a stock that loses money quickly is an opportunity to teach students about the importance and value of money.

Remind them that even when a stock loses or doesn't perform that it's still important to keep investing -- it's a good lesson both for the stock exchange game and the real world.

Finally, the fun part! Get a little healthy competition going by hosting a contest between your students. You can tailor this part to your individual needs, but an easy way to do this is to print out each student's progress chart each week. The student with the best portfolio performance wins.

List the top five student's achievement on the classroom bulletin board and invite your students to try and out-rank each other. Encourage the top performing students to give others tips on how they succeeded at the stock exchange game.

You can also up the competition by adding "awards" say for the student whose portfolio makes the best progress or the student who chooses a stock that makes a surprising upturn.