Teacher Starter Guide
HowTheMarketWorks is the fastest-growing free stock market game for a reason – we put teachers first! Before you get started on HowTheMarketWorks, however, we want to make sure you are aware of our ad-free Financial Literacy Games for Students site (PersonalFinanceLab.com) that features both our personal budgeting/banking game and our our stock market game all in one.
Otherwise, to get your first class contest up and running on HowTheMarketWorks, we want to get you familiar with some of the awesome features waiting for both you and your students once trading gets started!
Step 1: Create Your Class Contest
Your first step is to create your Class Contest. This is where you choose how your class stock game will work – pick how much cash to give each student to start, the dates for your contest, how much commission to charge, and more. Once your contest is set up, you will get a unique registration link to share with your students – this will let them choose a username and password, and add them to your class contest.
If you aren’t sure what settings to use, we make it easy – the default settings for all rules will give you a great class experience, right out of the box!
Step 2: Add Assignments
Once your contest is set up, the next step is creating your first “Assignment”.
An Assignment is a list of tasks that you require your students to complete. This can include watching tutorial videos, reading articles, using financial calculators, and placing different types of trades. You can have multiple Assignments, each with its own start dates and due dates.
We recommend all classes have at least one assignment requiring students to watch basic portfolio tutorial videos and read about a few of the essential investing terms, giving each student the knowledge they need to start building their portfolio.
Step 3: Using Reports
After your students start building their portfolio and progressing through their assignments, you can monitor their progress with the Teacher Reports.
The most detailed reports are embedded into the Rankings page – next to each student, click the “View” button to see their current holdings, all previous trades, and all the Trade Notes they made so far during the class contest.
You can find more reports from the “My Contests” page. Click “Manage Assignments” to create a new Assignment, or see student progress on one that is already posted. You can also Download all class data into one place – giving you a single spreadsheet listing each student’s trade history, current holdings, account balances, and more.
Now What?
Once your class is up and running, just distribute the unique registration link you got when you created your class to your students. Don’t worry about writing it down – we will automatically email you a copy of it, and you can find it again any time by clicking “Invite Others” on the “My Contests” page.
As your class gets moving, add new assignments, lasting a week or two each. These work great either as in-class activities or homework. Pick activities that line up best with your class activities for the week, while watching your students compete and learn!
FAQ
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