Free financial literacy lesson plans for Grade 12 Maths Literacy

The three financial literacy lesson plans

Each lesson plan is its own page, with the minute-by-minute outline, the printable worksheet, the answer key, a discussion prompt and the curriculum link. Teach them in any order: they do not depend on each other.

How to run it in class

• Devices

  Any phone, tablet or computer with a browser works, and pairs share a device well. Nothing to install and no sign-up. One screen on a projector is enough for the Deal of the Day and for lesson 3.

• Cookies

  The first time a student opens the site, a cookie question appears. The game needs none of the optional cookies, so Reject non-essential is a fine answer.

• Sound

  The game has sound effects. Students can switch them off with the Sound button in the game, or use headphones.

• Saved runs and shared devices

  The game saves a run in the browser of the device it is played on. On a school device that several classes use, ask students to play in a private window, or clear the site's data at the end of the lesson, so the next class starts fresh.

• How long it takes

  Each lesson is built to fit 45 minutes. The game part uses only the first minutes of a run: a Quick run is the game's shorter run (5 years of game time, which the game estimates at 6 to 25 minutes) and the lessons stop long before the end.

• Printing

  Each lesson page has a Print worksheet button and a Print answer key button. Ctrl+P (Cmd+P on a Mac) on a lesson page prints that lesson's student worksheet on one A4 page and never the answer key.

• If the week's market does not suit

  The game plays a different stretch of history each week, announced on its title screen. Lesson 1's worksheet works without the game, because its table of prime rates is printed on it. If a week's early years have no rate moves, play one more year or choose the Full run.

Curriculum notes and sources

Lessons 1 and 2 are mapped to the South African Mathematical Literacy curriculum. We checked every link against the official document itself, read the page and the Grade column, and say what the CAPS does not name. We paraphrase it and do not quote it. This is our mapping: Privately is not affiliated with the Department of Basic Education and this pack is not endorsed by it. Check each lesson against your province’s annual teaching plan, because the CAPS sets what is taught and the plan sets when.

• Lesson 1 practises Grade 12 loan content (Finance, pages 54, 56 and 57), with the real cost of a loan in Grades 11 and 12. The CAPS says learners are not expected to know complex financial formulae, so the worksheet gives the repayments and asks for the reasoning.
• Lesson 2 practises percentages and costs from a given table (tariff systems), both Grades 10 to 12, in a house-buying context that the CAPS lists for Grade 12 (pages 34, 48 and 50). Transfer duty is not one of the tariffs the CAPS names, and expected value is beyond it.
• Lesson 3 is for tertiary and adult education and is not mapped to the CAPS. Grade 12 income tax brackets (page 59) are the nearest school link, and the rest is beyond Grade 12.

Privacy: no student data collected

No student data is collected: nothing that names or identifies a student is asked for or sent. A few technical things do happen, and they are listed below so a teacher can say what happens when a class plays. For the full account, including the whole site, read the Counter That section of our privacy policy.

• Counter That has no sign-in and never asks a student for a name, email address, phone number or ID number. Nothing on these pages asks for personal details either, and the worksheets are paper: what a student writes stays with you.
• The game saves a run, results and settings in the browser of the device it is played on, and nowhere else. Clearing the site's data in the browser removes them.
• While students play, the game sends Privately anonymous counts (for example that a run started or finished, and which character was chosen). They are made only of choices from fixed lists and small numbers, and carry no name, email, phone number, ID number or free text, so they cannot be tied to a student. The game cannot be told to stop sending them.
• Like any website, our servers receive the network address of the device. On a school network that is usually the school's address. Our hosting and logging providers can keep it in their server logs for up to 90 days.
• Optional analytics cookies on privately.co.za run only if someone accepts them in the cookie banner, and the game sets no cookies of its own.

Questions teachers ask