Ten Personal Finance Capstone Review Activities

Every extension educator has been there. You’ve just taught some personal finance content (e.g., investment basics or wise credit use) and you want to make sure that it “stuck.”  You are looking for a fun, interactive activity to reinforce what you just covered.

Below is a summary of ten interactive activities to review previously taught personal finance content:

1. Educational Games- Tools that are popular with teachers in a K-12 setting can also work well as capstone reviews with adults. For example, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission offers tools and games.
2. Collaborative Review Activity- Type up review questions on a half-sheet of paper, distribute them, and ask learners to get up, mingle, and answer each other’s questions. Debrief the activity by reviewing the questions and answers with the total group.
3. Online Breakout Rooms- Similar to an in-person collaborative review, assign review questions to breakout rooms within a distance education platform. Debrief the activity with everyone.
4. Crumple and Shoot- Rules and videos for this activity are easily searchable online. Crumple and Shoot combines a quiz game with a paper toss. Learners play individually or on teams and receive a point for getting correct answers to a review question and another point for throwing crumpled up paper into a garbage can.
5. Two Sentence Summary- Ask learners, individually or in small groups, to summarize what they have learned in two sentences. Debrief the activity with everyone.
6. Myth or Fact?- Create a collection of true and false statements and ask learners to “vote with their feet” or raise their hand to indicate whether a statement is a myth (false) or a fact (true). Debrief the activity.
7. Digital Polling- Use an online polling app to ask multiple choice questions to which learners respond in real time. Debrief the activity by reviewing the correct answers.
8. Lightning Talks- Ask learners, individually or in pairs, to summarize what they learned in a short 5-minute presentation. Preparing the presentation will necessitate collaboration and a review of content.
9. Two Truths and a Lie- Prepare a series of multiple choice questions with two correct answers and one incorrect answer. Ask learners to identify the incorrect “lie” and correct it.
10. Index Card Summary- Ask learners to briefly summarize the most important thing they learned on a paper or digital index card. Debrief the activity by reviewing their ideas or creating a summary video to showcase the advice.

In summary, there are many ways to review personal finance content. The more ways that learners see information presented, the more likely they are to remember it!

Written by Barbara O’Neill, Ph.D., CFP®, AFC® and Martie Gillen, Ph.D., MBA, AFC®, CFLE
Edited by Kristen Jowers, MS MFT