This a guest post (and the first ever at TA) from Amy Hennessy from the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta. She is the Educational Specialist there and is able to provide resources to teachers and schools. Amy has been an educator for many years and is now able to help bring innovative lessons on economics, globalization, and personal finance.
The Federal Reserve System promotes economic and financial education by providing a variety of resources for educators. Print and online publications, curricula, lesson plans and activities, teacher workshops, online learning programs and games are offered throughout the system.
The Federal Reserve System promotes economic and financial education by providing a variety of resources for educators. Print and online publications, curricula, lesson plans and activities, teacher workshops, online learning programs and games are offered throughout the system.
On April 26, 2010 the redesigned website, www.federalreserveeducation.org, went live. The site highlights classroom and public resources, information about the Fed, Fed Econ Ed news and multimedia offerings. It correlates resources to CEE and Jump$tart standards, grade levels, target audience, type of material, keywords, and topic. The search engine links an extensive list of economic and finance keywords to Fed resources. Teachers can access The Great Depression curriculum as well as personal finance curricula such as Katrina’s Classroom; It’s Your Paycheck, Cards, Cars, and Currency, The Money Circle, and Building Wealth via this site.
Each District has its own website featuring their specific offerings for educators. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s site, www.frbatlanta.org, includes winning lesson plans as well as Extra Credit, a newsletter published in the spring and fall with six different issues. Teachers can find activities for the classroom and information about current economic and financial topics in Extra Credit. The Classroom Economist is a professional development program featuring modules on money, inflation, and fractional reserve banking. Upcoming modules will cover monetary policy, unemployment and labor market issues, GDP, the history, structure, and functions of the Federal Reserve. SMART lessons accompany each module.
Also, teachers will want to use the valuable content and lesson suggestions from the following banks’ newsletters: St. Louis’ Inside the Vault, Kansas City’s Teaching Tips, San Francisco’s Dr. Econ, and Cleveland’s Forefront in the Classroom. Sixth District economic news is the focus of Atlanta’s quarterly publication Econ South. Podcasts and macroblogs can be accessed on the Atlanta site for use in the classroom as well.
Also, teachers can order free classroom sets of our disposable workbooks for children such as My Money and The Piggy Bank Primer as well as other print publications: https://www.newyorkfed.org/publications/frame1.cfm?cmdBrowseType=Publications.
The St. Louis Fed’s award winning Econ Ed Live! provides online learning courses in personal finance, the Great Depression, economic indicators, the time value of money, and concepts associate with international trade; http://www.stlouisfed.org/education_resources/online_learning.cfm. The St. Louis Fed’s GeoFred site, http://geofred.stlouisfed.org, is an online data mapping tool for economic data. Teachers will find numerous lessons that integrate key personal finance and economics concepts through children’s literature on the St. Louis Federal Reserve’s education page. Most of these lessons have interactive whiteboard activities as well. Advanced Placement teachers should check out the lessons and interactive white board activities here.
The Cleveland Fed’s Drawing Board, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj9-kRv0e6s&feature=player_embedded, presents otherwise complicated information about the Federal Reserve and other economic concepts through an engaging video format.
Boston’s online interactive game for elementary students called Pursuit! On the Trail of Economic Growth, http://www.economicadventure.org/pursuit/, introduces young learners to the concept of economic growth using a mix of history and animation. For high school students the Boston Fed’s online game Peanuts & Crackerjacks, http://www.bos.frb.org/peanuts/indexsound.htm, uses baseball and pro sports trivia to teach about economics while Show Business: The Economic$ of Entertainment combines the entertainment industry with fundamental economic concepts and the basics behind globalization and international trade; http://www.bostonfed.org/entertainment/index.htm.
The Federal Reserve economic education teams conduct and/or host workshops for teachers and pre-service teachers. Teachers receive materials, presentations on economic and financial education content, exposure to Fed economists and the opportunity to share best practices with their colleagues.
The Federal Reserve strives to support the work of educators in promoting economic and financial literacy.
