Essential question: How do time, interest, inflation, and fees change the real value of money?
Instructional caution: Distinguish factual definitions, legal holdings, economic relationships, value judgments, and policy preferences. Do not grade students for political viewpoint; grade evidence, accuracy, reasoning, citation, and disciplinary method.
Calculate simple and compound growth, real return, and fee-adjusted outcomes under several rates and time horizons.
Use a spreadsheet to determine the present saving needed for a future education or emergency goal.
Instructional aim: Define the Week 13 problem, establish the relevant institutions or economic relationships, and construct an initial answer to the essential question.
Evidence of learning: Identify one distinction that prevents a common oversimplification of this topic.
Support: Provide a vocabulary preview, chunked text, text-to-speech, and claim/evidence sentence frames.
Extension: Identify a competing theoretical interpretation and describe what evidence could distinguish it.
Instructional aim: Evaluate a primary record, legal case, policy document, contract, or institutional source for authority, evidence, context, and limitation.
Evidence of learning: State one claim the focal record supports and one claim it cannot establish alone.
Support: Define specialized language, provide a structured annotation guide, and allow oral rehearsal before writing.
Extension: Locate a source from a different institutional or social position and explain how it confirms, complicates, or contradicts the first.
Instructional aim: Interpret a quantitative model, institutional process, financial calculation, or policy tradeoff without confusing description and causation.
Evidence of learning: Explain which conclusion remains valid after the changed assumption and which conclusion does not.
Support: Provide labeled examples, formulas or process steps, and a partially completed model.
Extension: Perform a sensitivity analysis or compare an alternative policy/institutional design.
Instructional aim: Construct and defend a precise claim using disciplinary evidence, a counterclaim, and a proportionate conclusion.
Evidence of learning: Explain why the counterclaim deserves a response rather than dismissal.
Support: Use claim-evidence-reasoning frames and permit an audio or oral draft before the final written product.
Extension: Rewrite the recommendation for an audience with a different role, jurisdiction, time horizon, or risk tolerance.
Instructional aim: Demonstrate weekly mastery, correct misconceptions, and transfer the central concept to a new case.
Evidence of learning: Apply the week’s reasoning to this mastery action: A student distinguishes nominal from real return and includes fees, taxes, rate assumptions, and compounding frequency.
Support: Allow extended time, reduced-distraction setting, read-aloud where appropriate, and repeated attempts after documented correction.
Extension: Write one high-quality examination question and an answer key explaining why each distractor is wrong.
Each principal assignment is worth 30 points: 8 accuracy, 8 evidence or calculation, 6 reasoning, 4 counterargument/limitation, and 4 clarity/citation. Use the course rubrics for expanded descriptors.
| # | Question | Answer | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Which definition best matches “simple interest”? | D | Simple interest means interest calculated only on principal. |
| 2 | Which definition best matches “compound interest”? | D | Compound interest means interest calculated on principal plus previously credited interest. |
| 3 | Which definition best matches “future value”? | B | Future value means the amount a current sum is expected to grow to under stated assumptions. |
| 4 | Which definition best matches “present value”? | C | Present value means the current equivalent of a future sum discounted at a stated rate. |
| 5 | Which definition best matches “nominal return”? | B | Nominal return means return measured before adjusting for inflation. |
| 6 | Which definition best matches “real return”? | D | Real return means return after adjusting for inflation. |
| 7 | Which statement is most consistent with the evidence and reasoning developed in Week 13? | A | Compounding rewards time, rate, and consistency but does not guarantee returns when rates vary or principal is at risk. |
| 8 | Which statement is most consistent with the evidence and reasoning developed in Week 13? | D | Inflation reduces purchasing power, so nominal growth can coexist with negative real growth. |
| 9 | Which statement is most consistent with the evidence and reasoning developed in Week 13? | B | Fees compound negatively and can substantially reduce long-term outcomes. |
| 10 | Which action best demonstrates mastery of the Week 13 inquiry? | A | A student distinguishes nominal from real return and includes fees, taxes, rate assumptions, and compounding frequency. |
Why do people often underestimate the long-term cost of small recurring fees or high-interest debt?
5 points: clear claim, accurate disciplinary reasoning, two specific pieces of evidence, meaningful qualification or counterargument, and complete explanation.