Teacher’s Guide

This resource will help teachers new to our stock game get familiarized with the registration process, student interactions, teacher reports, and how to use the game as part of their classes.

Registration

Registration is simple! If you are using the simulation for the first time, go to the registration link provided by your challenge administrator. This will prompt you to fill out some information about you, your school, and your classes.

Some of the key fields include:

  • Username and Password – you will use this to log into your teacher account
  • Age – This is YOUR age. We need to retain this information to comply with various data privacy laws. Registration may be restricted to teachers who are over 18.
  • School Email – This will be where we send email confirmations for the simulation, along with password resets and most other information.
  • School Name – This is your school, and it also appears on the Rankings page for students.
  • Grade Level / County / Region – Depending on the challenge, these are used on the Rankings page to differentiate different divisions.
  • Student Username Prefix – This is used to generate your student accounts. For example, if you enter “knights” and request 3 accounts, the system will generate something like “knights-df1”, “knights-ct2”, “knights-gw3” as the student usernames.
  • Number of Logins/Teams – This is how many student/team logins we will generate for you. If you have students working individually, you will need one login per student. If you have students working in teams, you will just need one login per team.
  • Number of students – The total number of students in your class.

Once the form is filled out, click “Register”. You’ll be taken to a confirmation page showing your student logins (you will distribute these to your students so they can log into the simulation). We will also send a copy of this information by email.

Returning Teachers

If you have used the SMS before, you won’t need to completely re-register. Simply log into your old teacher account and click “Join New Challenge” near the top of the page.

Administration and Reports

Once you’re registered, you can now log in with your teacher account! Logging in will take you to the Instructor Dashboard, which has all of your teacher tools in one place.

Click the info buttons on the image below for more information about each part of the page!

If you leave the Instructor Administration page, you can get back here by clicking “Instructor Administration” at the very top-left of the page.

Practice Sessions

Most challenges start with a “Practice Session”. This means if you register early, your students can log in and start trading before the official challenge start date. The day before the “true” start, all student portfolios will be reset to their starting positions.

Learning Center

The Learning Center on the main menu has over 500 articles, videos, and lessons on Personal Finance, Economics, and Investing. These may be featured as part of an Assignment on your challenges – teachers are encouraged to use these lessons as a supplement to the stock game as part of their classes.

If the administrator included these lessons in a challenge-wide Assignment, you will be able to see your students’ progress on your teacher reports.

We also took many of our most popular lessons and turned them into PowerPoint presentations that you can use for direct instruction! You can find our library of presentations by clicking here.

Lesson Plans

We also have a library of customizable lesson plans available, featuring activities in the stock game, lessons from our Learning Center, and more in-class activities you can use for a variety of topics. You can find our lesson plan library by clicking here.

Teacher FAQ

SMS

Are the rankings delayed?
The student rankings page is streaming live throughout the day. Depending on the size of the challenge, it can take up to 1 hour for all student portfolios to be completely “revalued”, but they are updating constantly throughout the day.
Can I place trades using my teacher account?

Yes! Teachers are encouraged to trade alongside their students and build their own portfolios. Teachers are excluded from the main rankings.

Can I remove students from my class?

If you need to remove students, please contact our support team under “About” at the very top of the page.

Do I need to register a new account for every challenge?

No, you can re-use your old teacher account. Just log in and click “Join New Challenge” near the top of the page.

How quickly do my students orders get processed?

We use a real-time data feed for order execution. This means if your students place an order in their portfolio and the markets are open, it will execute immediately (so long as there is enough volume – penny stocks or very obscure stocks may not execute immediately).

Your student’s portfolio will also instantly be updated to reflect the new value, and they can see their stocks right away. Keep in mind that while we use real-time prices for order execution, the prices we show have a 15 minute delay to comply with financial data rules.

I have the same group of students that will participate in both a Fall and Spring challenge. Can they use the same login?

No, you will need to get a fresh batch of student accounts for each challenge.

There are multiple teachers at my school using the simulation. Can we get combined rankings?

If both teacher register using the EXACT same school name (including spaces, capitalization, and punctuation), the “School” rankings on the rankings page will be combined.

There are multiple teachers working with the same class. How can we both see the student progress?

At this time, the teachers would need to share a single teacher login to see the reports for the students (we can’t put the same student under multiple teachers)