Getting started with Banqer High Junior made easy

If you are new to Banqer High Junior and are considering time periods and the order in which you should activate each module, this article is a great starting point!

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Easy to implement a curriculum-aligned program

Getting started with Banqer High Junior is an exciting opportunity to bring financial education to life in your classroom! Teachers often ask how it fits into the curriculum, how much time to dedicate, and how often to teach it.

This article answers those questions and more, helping you feel confident as you plan your lessons.

Banqer High Junior aligns with the national curricula in New Zealand and Australia, as well as certain state curricula. Careful planning of your activation and lesson timeline ensures you and your students get the most out of the platform.

To get started, we recommend using one of our Banqer High Junior Unit Plans:

Full Unit Plan (NZ) / Teaching Sequence (AU): A comprehensive guide for subjects like financial literacy, commerce, economics, and mathematics.
Social Studies Unit Plan (NZ) / Humanities Teaching Sequence (AU): Tailored for Social Studies, linking Banqer to Social Sciences curricula.
Maths Unit Plan (NZ) / Teaching Sequence (AU): Focused on integrating Banqer into Maths lessons with curriculum-specific details.

Each plan includes complete lesson guides, worksheets, and resources to streamline your planning. Explore the NZ Example or AU Example to get started!

GIF showing the locations of the unit plans

How often should I do a full Banqer High Junior lesson?

Every classroom is unique, so how often you teach a Banqer lesson depends on your schedule and how many resources you integrate. Our lesson plans offer a comprehensive framework for introducing expansions. Check out our NZ Example or our AU Example to get started!

Each expansion is designed to be introduced over one or more lessons, giving you flexibility to tailor your approach. You can deepen learning with our worksheets and supporting resources to create rich class discussions and learning. We also see many of our Banqer teachers designing their own exercises and resources to supplement our platform in new and creative ways.

We don’t recommend enabling more than one expansion at a time. Once activated, expansions stay enabled, and their content and quizzes become accessible to students so it’s best to enable them when you’re ready to teach the topic.

We do recommend you create a separate test classroom for yourself to play around with all the expansions and features without impacting your students or undermining your planning.

recommendations for expansion activation in Banqer High

A full year with Banqer High Junior

This approach gives you and your students the most time to explore Banqer concepts and is our recommendation if time allows. Ideally, you should allocate two to three lessons per expansion to allow for an in-depth exploration of the topics.

The Unit Plan suggests an activation order based on how expansions flow into one another, but you can adjust this to fit your schedule and priorities. Introducing the expansions across the first half of the year and then using the second half of the year to revise is a great way to keep student engagement high and reinforce student learning.

Banqer High Junior is flexible enough to support a range of learning contexts, but we recommend introducing expansions consistently over a block of time to maintain focus and engagement. If shifting focus to content outside Banqer, we recommend encouraging students to check in for ten minutes each lesson to ensure they continue to progress and remain engaged with the program.

Start with the Banking expansion, followed by Careers, within the first week or two. This gets students engaging right away, earning Banqer money as they become familiar with the platform. From there, you can move to the Property expansion or bring forward the Stock Exchange expansion to maximize time for students to experience the ups and downs of investing.

One term with Banqer High Junior

A ten-week term is a great timeframe to introduce the core concepts of Banqer. What you teach will depend on your available time, curriculum priorities, and what you think will best engage your students.

If time allows, we recommend dedicating one to two weeks per expansion to support retention and comprehension of the content covered. Introducing the Stock Exchange expansion early is also encouraged in the 10-week timeframe to ensure students have enough time to see how their stock portfolio performs over the course of several weeks.

Here’s an example of how to structure your program:

Enable Banking Expansion: Introduce credit, debit, interest, and loans.
Enable Careers Expansion: Cover topics like student loans, CV creation, job applications, KiwiSaver/Superannuation, and long-term financial planning.
Enable Renting Expansion: Explore renting concepts and optionally enable Stage 2, Home-ownership, for discussions on deposits, responsibilities, and liabilities.
Enable Stock Exchange Expansion: Enable the expansion and, after a week, teach its concepts. This allows students to experience the stock market without full comprehension (a great life lesson!).

Banqer High Junior class wrap-up

What happens after completing all the expansions? Banqer doesn’t just stop once the content is covered! Your class will have a wrap-up date, automatically set based on your timeframe and class start date.

Wrap-up is the final lesson in Banqer and is a great way to reflect on what your students have learned. As the date approaches, students are prompted to finish any outstanding tasks. This is a good time to revisit any of the concepts for the final time.

On the wrap-up date, each student receives a personalised overview of their Banqer High journey, including:

Their money personality
Achievements earned
Final leaderboard ranking
A downloadable certificate of achievement

Teachers can download all student certificates and CVs directly from their dashboard. Many Banqer teachers celebrate with an awards ceremony, a fun way to recognize students’ achievements and their newfound financial literacy skills.

2024 class wrapping up

Banqer High Junior over other time periods

Banqer High Junior also allows you to select a twenty-week period for use across two to three terms. From the teacher dashboard, you can easily adjust your wrap-up date to fit your class schedule - whether you need to extend or bring it forward!

Working with a different timeframe? Or perhaps you’ve started using Banqer later in the year? No problem! Our Knowledge Base is full of helpful articles and resources to answer your questions and guide you in making Banqer work for your class.

If you’re new to Banqer and want to check out what it’s all about, our team would love to show you under the hood. You can book a brief 15-minute demo with our financial education experts.

For New Zealand educators: Book a 15-minute demo

For Australian educators: Book a 15-minute demo

Ready to see how Banqer can help your class?

Book a demo