Grade 6 Business & Finance

32 of 36 lessons are MUST COVER. They are tested on the unit tests and exams, or are skills the SAT/ACT relies on. OPTIONAL lessons are enrichment. Do them if time allows. The course is complete when the MUST COVER lessons are done.

Unit 1: Work, Trade and Productivity

• MUST COVER 1.1 Capital Goods and Productivity: McCormick’s Reaper · unit test
• MUST COVER 1.2 Arkwright’s Mill and the Factory System · unit test
• MUST COVER 1.3 Comparative Advantage: Why Trade Pays, with Numbers · unit test
• MUST COVER 1.4 Called to Work: John Harrison and the Longitude Clock · unit test

Unit 2: The Story of Money

• MUST COVER 2.1 Money’s Three Jobs: The Stones of Yap · unit test
• MUST COVER 2.2 Spanish Silver and the Great Price Rise · unit test
• MUST COVER 2.3 Central Banks: The Bank of England and the Federal Reserve · unit test
• MUST COVER 2.4 Measuring Inflation: The Price Index, with Numbers · unit test

Unit 3: Markets

• MUST COVER 3.1 Demand Curves and Elasticity: Rowland Hill’s Penny Post · unit test
• MUST COVER 3.2 The Four Market Structures · unit test
• MUST COVER 3.3 Price Ceilings and Shortages: The Gas Lines of 1979 · unit test
• MUST COVER 3.4 Natural Monopolies: Edison’s Pearl Street Station and the Utility Commission · unit test

Unit 4: Great Businesses and Their Stakeholders

• MUST COVER 4.1 The Hudson’s Bay Company: Three Centuries of Trade · unit test
• MUST COVER 4.2 Boulton & Watt: Selling Power · unit test
• MUST COVER 4.3 Cadbury’s Bournville: A Factory in a Garden · unit test
• MUST COVER 4.4 Toyota’s Production System: Stop the Line, Fix the Problem · unit test

Unit 5: Workers, Owners and Fair Rules

• MUST COVER 5.1 The Mill Girls of Lowell: The Gains and Costs of Factory Work · unit test
• MUST COVER 5.2 The Factory Acts and Lord Shaftesbury · unit test
• MUST COVER 5.3 Samuel Gompers and the Trade Unions · unit test
• MUST COVER 5.4 The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: The Forty-Hour Week · unit test

Unit 6: Entrepreneurship and Sales

• MUST COVER 6.1 The Business Plan: Jacob Davis’s Letter and the Riveted Pants · unit test
• MUST COVER 6.2 Market Research: Asking Before You Build · unit test
• MUST COVER 6.3 The Four P’s of Marketing: H. J. Heinz and the Pickle Pin · unit test
• MUST COVER 6.4 Reaching the Customer: The Sears, Roebuck Catalog · unit test

Unit 7: Accounting

• MUST COVER 7.1 The Journal and the Ledger: Debits and Credits · unit test
• MUST COVER 7.2 The Trial Balance: Checking the Books · unit test
• MUST COVER 7.3 The Income Statement: Wedgwood Counts His Costs · unit test
• MUST COVER 7.4 Cash Flow: Profit Is Not Cash · unit test

Unit 8: Saving, Investing and Giving

• MUST COVER 8.1 Compound Interest with a Formula: Henry Duncan’s Savings Bank · unit test
• MUST COVER 8.2 Stocks and the New York Stock Exchange · unit test
• MUST COVER 8.3 Bonds: Lending to Governments and Companies · unit test
• MUST COVER 8.4 Credit, Debt, Giving and the Family Market Day · unit test

Unit 9: Bonus: Run a Real Business OPTIONAL unit

• OPTIONAL 9.1 Write the Plan and Find the Start-up Money
• OPTIONAL 9.2 Set Up the Books: Rockefeller’s Ledger A
• OPTIONAL 9.3 Run It for a Month: Lydia, a Seller of Purple
• OPTIONAL 9.4 Close the Month: Statements, Lessons and Giving

From the course’s own 36-week pacing guide, with catch-up and review weeks added to fill a 36-week (180-day) year.

Grading: Projects (effort, careful measuring and counting, and the improve-it step) 40%, Ledger notebook (dated pages, formulas and units shown, honest records) 20%, Unit reviews 15%, Portfolio projects 25%. Scale: A 90–100, B 80–89, C 70–79, D 60–69. Below 60: redo the project or review with help.