Investing Basics

Skill Level: Intermediate, Advanced

Time: Two 45-minute class periods (or one 90-minute block)

Essential Question: How do the investment choices you make today affect your financial security in the future?

Overview: Students play two games, Slice of the Market and Investor Tower before reflecting on how their in-game choices connect to real investing decisions.

Introduction: In Investor Tower, students play as a young professional climbing a corporate office building. Each pay period, they earn income from through platformer gameplay and must decide how to allocate it across investment instruments: high-yield savings accounts, CDs, bonds, and stock funds. The investment options are modeled on historical market data. The game's structure creates a felt consequence: in the late game, compounding returns from smart early investing will far outpace anything the platformer section can earn. Students who ignore investing early will experience this gap directly.

Slice of the Market shifts the focus from individual instruments to portfolio construction. Given a scenario with a stated goal, time horizon, and risk profile, students allocate a portfolio across major asset classes and observe how their allocation performs. Changing the mix has visible, measurable consequences — students cannot treat diversification as an abstract concept.

The two games are designed to be played in sequence. Investor Tower builds vocabulary and intuition; Slice of the Market demands that students apply that intuition to a reasoned allocation decision.

Objectives: The student will…

  • Identify common types of financial assets, including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and CDs
  • Explain how compounding returns benefit investors who start early and invest consistently
  • Compare the risk and expected return of different investment types
  • Construct a portfolio allocation appropriate for a given investor's goals, time horizon, and risk tolerance
  • Discuss the tradeoffs between investing in a diversified fund versus individual stocks

Standards:Jump$tart Coalition National Standards for Personal Financial Education (2021)

Investing: Grade 8

  • 8-2: Common types of financial assets include CDs, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and real estate
  • 8-5: Instead of buying individual stocks and bonds, investors can buy shares of pooled investments such as mutual funds and ETFs
  • 8-6: Different types of investments expose investors to different degrees of risk
  • 8-7: The benefits of compounding for building wealth are greatest for people who invest regularly over longer periods of time

Investing: Grade 12

  • 12-1: A person's investment risk tolerance depends on factors such as personality, financial resources, investment experiences, and life circumstances
  • 12-3: Investors expect to earn higher rates of return when they invest in riskier assets
  • 12-6: When making diversification and asset allocation decisions, investors consider their risk tolerance, goals, and investing time horizon

Suggested Pacing:

Day 1: Investor Tower (45 min) Open with the Essential Question as a brief class discussion (5 min). Students play Investor Tower independently or in pairs (25–30 min). Close with a quick pair-share: What did you invest in first? What would you do differently? (10 min)

Day 2: Slice of the Market (45 min) Brief recap: What investment types from Day 1 do students remember? (5 min). Students play Slice of the Market (20–25 min), assigned a specific investor profile (e.g., "a 25-year-old with a high risk tolerance saving for retirement"). Exit ticket: In 2–3 sentences, explain the allocation you chose and why (10 min).