Students & Families Adult Education Adult & Community Learning Services
Adult and Community Learning Services

Financial Literacy Resources

It's Tax Time - Your Students May Benefit from More Information

It's the tax season and a perfect time to assess students understanding of taxes from how to file a tax return to what do we receive in return for paying them. The topic of taxes can be easily linked to the ABE curriculum frameworks and address strands such as Systems (History & the Social Sciences), or Number Sense (Math). Particularly given that this is an election year, the topic of taxes can be incorporated into enriching students' understanding of current events and civic engagement.

The links below from the SABES website provide useful tools for teachers and learners alike:

http://wwwIRS.gov
From the source comes a website which covers all the basics of payroll and income taxes, complete with 36 lesson plans. All the information and resources are available in English and Spanish.

http://www.mymoney.gov
The US Financial Literacy and Education Commission has put together a very link-dense site covering many of the common topics-credit, banking, planning for college, starting a business-and some not-so-common topics: responding to life events. The entire site also is available in Spanish.

Your Government, Your Taxes, Your Choices
This is an economic literacy curriculum for ABE students developed with MCAE that addresses services the state of Massachusetts provides, taxes people pay and issues of fairness, and advocacy. It has a short version and a resources page. Available on-line at no charge at: http://www.mcae.net/curriculum/index.html

For more information contact Mary Rauh: mrauh@doe.mass.edu