Taxes Lesson Plan: The National Economy

This lesson accompanies the BrainPOP topic Taxes, and supports the standard of explaining the ways in which the government pays for the goods and services it provides. Students demonstrate understanding through a variety of projects.

Step 1: ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Display an image of a receipt that includes sales tax, like the one shown below:

• What is sales tax and why is this on almost everything we purchase?
• What percentage of the subtotal is the sales tax?

Step 2: BUILD BACKGROUND

• Read aloud the description on the Taxes topic page .
• Play the Movie , pausing to check for understanding.
  

Step 3: APPLY and ASSESS

Assign Taxes Challenge and Quiz , prompting students to apply essential literacy skills while demonstrating what they learned about this topic.

Step 4: DEEPEN and EXTEND

Students express what they learned about taxes while practicing essential literacy skills with one or more of the following activities. Differentiate by assigning ones that meet individual student needs.

• Make-a-Movie: Produce a PSA that explains how taxes help provide services that benefit communities.
• Make-a-Map : Make a concept map describing the purpose of collecting taxes from citizens and identify three examples of how taxes can support a community.
• Creative Coding : Code a learning game challenging players to sort taxes and tax-funded services as federal or state.

More to Explore

Economics Unit : Continue to build understanding around economic concepts with more BrainPOP topics.

Teacher Support Resources:

• Pause Point Overview : Video tutorial showing how Pause Points actively engage students to stop, think, and express ideas.
• Learning Activities Modifications : Strategies to meet ELL and other instructional and student needs.
• Learning Activities Support: Resources for best practices using BrainPOP.

Lesson Plan Common Core State Standards Alignments

Analyze in detail how a key individual, event, or idea is introduced, illustrated, and elaborated in a text (e.g., through examples or anecdotes).

Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings.

Integrate information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words to develop a coherent understanding of a topic or issue.

Analyze the interactions between individuals, events, and ideas in a text (e.g., how ideas influence individuals or events, or how individuals influence ideas or events).

Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the impact of a specific word choice on meaning and tone.

Analyze how a text makes connections among and distinctions between individuals, ideas, or events (e.g., through comparisons, analogies, or categories).

Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including analogies or allusions to other texts.

Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language of a court opinion differs from that of a newspaper).

Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.

Interpret information presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and explain how it contributes to a topic, text, or issue under study.

Include multimedia components (e.g., graphics, images, music, sound) and visual displays in presentations to clarify information.

Analyze the main ideas and supporting details presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and explain how the ideas clarify a topic, text, or issue under study.

Include multimedia components and visual displays in presentations to clarify claims and findings and emphasize salient points.

Integrate multimedia and visual displays into presentations to clarify information, strengthen claims and evidence, and add interest.

Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.

Introduce a topic; organize complex ideas, concepts, and information so that each new element builds on that which precedes it to create a unified whole; include formatting (e.g., headings), graphics (e.g., figures, tables), and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.

Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information.

Use proportional relationships to solve multistep ratio and percent problems. Examples: simple interest, tax, markups and markdowns, gratuities and commissions, fees, percent increase and decrease, percent error.