Lesson
2 Activities
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Activity 2-1: Savings Accounts and Related
Fees
- As a warm up to the topic of savings accounts and to the picture story,
ask students:
- Do you save money?
- What do you save money for?
- Where do you save money? (under the bed, at home, at the bank?)
- In your country is it safe to save money at home or at a bank?
- Next, if the following terms don't come up in the first warm up, write
the words "emergency" and "crisis" on the board and
ask if anyone knows what the words mean. Make a list on the board of potential
emergencies or crises. (Students may only
offer health related examples. If they don't suggest other types of crises,
add "lose job/get fired" and "need to travel to country"
as additional examples.) Then ask the following questions for each
list item and check off (as appropriate):
- Does this cost money?
- Do you get a bill for this?
- How much does it cost? (take guesses)
- Does your family have medical insurance?
- Ask students if they think it is important to save for emergencies
and why.
- Following the instructions for Picture
Story Best Practices, generate a story and complete related picture
story activities.
The Car Accident
Alina and Fatima work together. They are friends. They clean offices. Fatima
says "I bought a new dress and shoes for the party on Saturday night!".
Alina says "I don't don't have new clothes but I have $1,000 in my
savings account for emergencies." They laugh.
One night, they have a car accident. Alina has a broken leg. Fatima also
has a broken leg. They share a room at the hospital.
Alina has money. She pays her hospital bill. Fatima does not have money
to pay.
They both tell their boss "I can't work because I have a broken leg.
I need six weeks off." The boss says "Sorry, no work, no pay."
Alina rests at home. Her family helps with the housework and cooking. She
has money in her savings account to pay for food and rent.
Fatima can not pay her rent. She can not pay her medical bills. Her landlord
says "No rent, no apartment. Move out tomorrow." They are very
sad. She says "I need to save money for an emergency."
Alina and Fatima work together again. Fatima tells Alina "I have $250
in my savings account." They laugh.
Activity 2-3: Basic Savings Account Fees
for Services
Worksheet 2-3: Savings
Account Fees for Services
-
If you did not already complete
the introductory banking lesson, print out and review the web page linked
below from the Social Security Administration. Ask students who have a
bank account what documentation they needed to open the account (social
security number, passport, etc.). Make two lists on the board, one for
citizens and one for non-citizens. List documentation in its appropriate
column and be sure your list contains only the documents listed in the
link below.
-
As an introduction to Activity 2-3, ask these questions:
- Does your bank give you extra money each month?
- Do your bank charge you money if your account
is under a certain amount?
- Do you get a check from your job, or does money
go automatically to your account?
- Associate the above definitions with the following terms and offer
the scenario below:
- interest rate
- minimum balance
- direct deposit
- example: To explain how
interest grows on $100, print out and present this interest
rate scenario (http://www.practicalmoneyskills.com/english/at_home/consumers/saving/princip/interest.php)
from practicalmoneyskills.com .Continue to explain how a minimum balance
and direct deposit work using this example. Say you decide to take out
$60 from your savings account. Now you are down to $40 but your account
has a $50 minimum balance. You get charged $2 for every month your balance
is below $100. Say you have direct deposit through your work, and with
this type of account you do not have any minimum balance. You can take
out your $60 and you will not get charged a fee.
- Have students look at the chart (2-3) and work on their own to answer
the True/False questions about the savings account services, then compare
answers with a partner. As with checking accounts, remind students that
they can save money by shopping around for the lowest fees. Also, encourage
students to seek information in their own language at banks to compare fees
and services.
Answers:
1) True 2) True 3) False
- As an extension activity or for homework, ask students to fill in
the chart for their bank, or a nearby bank. Compare answers in class and
create a chart for the classroom.
- In addition, literate and computer literate Spanish speaking students
can access the Money Smart and Practical Money Skills web sites (see links
below) on their own time for more information on saving money and other
money management topics.
Final Activity: Reflection
-
Ask students
to write down, or tell you as you circulate around the room, one thing
they learned in class today (it could be a new concept, a new word,
a grammar point, it doesn't matter). This is a very useful technique
to discover in what ways the lesson made an impact on individual students.
It will also give you information for reporting financial literacy gains,
so be sure to have your chart
handy as you walk around the room, or for recording notes after class.
Web Links
FDIC - Money
Smart - An Adult Education Program http://www.fdic.gov/consumers/consumer/moneysmart/mscbi/mscbi.html
(click on "Enter Money Smart CBI Online")
This is an amazing online resource for most of the topics covered in this
curriculum. The online multimedia and interactive modules require a free registration/log-in.
In the first module, students can "go inside" a bank and click on
the employees to hear what they do. If using this site in class, students
would need to log in, and then view the entire module - you can't go to a
specific point within a module to cover a specific subtopic. Because of this,
the site may be a good activity to assign for outside of class once you teach
students how to log in. The modules are also available in Spanish. The
saving money related module, called "Pay
Yourself First" covers these topics:
- Identify ways
to save money
- Describe how
money can grow when you save
- Tell the difference
between savings and investments accounts
Practical Money
Skills for Life
http://www.practicalmoneyskills.com/english/index.php
This is a free Web site designed to help educators, parents and students
practice better money management. The link below goes through an example of
how interest is paid on a savings account. It can help teachers explain the
concept to students. http://www.practicalmoneyskills.com/english/at_home/consumers/saving/princip/interest.php.The
language level on this site is too high for beginner and low-intermediate
level students. However, all the content on the site is available in Spanish
and Chinese. This link in Spanish covers many aspects of savings. http://www.vidaydinero.com/spanish/at_home/consumers/saving/.
Social Security
Administration - http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10120.html.
To open a bank account, banks must see a social security card. U.S. citizens
and non-U.S. citizens can be issued a card. This web page lists the documentation
necessary to be issued a social security card. Non-citizens, as of January
2007, must provide one of these documents to be issued a card: Form I-551
(includes machine-readable immigrant visa with your unexpired foreign passport);
I-94 with your unexpired foreign passport; or Work permit card (I-766 or I-688B).