The Stock Market Game™ - Evolving to meet teachers' needs!

The Stock Market Game program has two parts; a resource center for teachers, providing lessons and activities, course outlines, projects, assessments and correlations to learning standards, and the student portfolio simulation. These two parts evolve as needed to meet teaching and learning requirements.

The Teacher Support Center (TSC) provides teaching resources, PowerPoint presentations showing the student portfolio and how it functions, and a Teachers' Guide to give the first-time SMG teacher guidance and direction. Lessons in the TSC are correlated to Illinois learning standards in the areas of English language arts, mathematics and social studies and are searchable by grade level, grades 4 through high school.

New to the TSC are two new curricula, intermediate and advanced levels of "Math Behind the Market", a previously published resource which was originally less focused and did not include higher math skills. These new editions are well organized and meet more teaching needs, correlating closely to the national and Illinois standards in teaching math. A beginning level "Math" will be available fall 2008 - primarily for use with grades 4 and 5 or any beginning level math student.

More resources are being made available in Spanish language, addressing that teaching need. Additional resources in Spanish will be available this fall.

To provide teachers flexibility in use of the SMG program, this spring will see a new "Enrichment Session" offered, running March 17 - May 23. The standard January to April (non-Chicago schools) or February to April (Chicago schools) sessions are available, but the late session offers teachers a different choice for scheduling the program with their students.

On the student portfolio side, starting fall 2008, students will be able to buy and sell Bonds. Accompanying lessons will help teachers teach about this form of investment - and in turn, teach themselves! Due to this change, the portfolio will undergo a facelift this summer! That means no summer session will be available for use while system changes are being implemented. As with the current availability of mutual funds, bonds are just an option and are not a requirement in the portfolio.

For complete information on session dates, registration deadlines and upcoming teacher workshops, go to the SMG's public page, www.stockmarketgame.org and click one of the Registration buttons. Select USA / Illinois to find information specific to the SMG program in Illinois.

To see the Teacher Support Center as a non-registered visitor, go to the SMG public page, www.stockmarketgame.org; click the blue link "Access the Teacher Support Center to examine ..."

For questions that are not answered by visiting www.stockmarketgame.org and the related pages, contact SMG Program Coordinator Marty Paul at mpaul@niu.edu or toll-free phone, 877 - I DO ECON.