Letting The Dice Roll —

Sixth Graders Take Their Chances In The Stock Market

By Jeff White

The stock market looked to rebound this week, and sixth graders at Newtown Middle School can breathe a sigh of relief.

These students are in the middle of an intense 10-week investment competition called the Connecticut Stock Market Game, a version of a program that is played twice a year throughout the country.

Students team up in groups of four, and each group has a theoretical $100,000 in funds to invest in the stock market. Although the first two weeks of the game are intensive, as teachers instruct students on how the stock market works, the game breaks down into a once-per-week happening thereafter. Each week, students fill in their bubble sheets, which depict not only the companies they hold stock in, but any stocks they bought or traded that week. These sheets are sent to the University of Connecticut, which organizes student data throughout the state. The Connecticut Post administers the game.

UCONN sends the sheets on to the University of New Mexico for analysis, which is returned to middle school students a few weeks later with their results and an explanation of where each group stands against groups across the state. The game is designed so that the gains and losses that each group experiences mirror the actual ebbs and flows of the stock market.

Sixth grade teachers like John Ventresca see the activity, which has been going on for 10 years now, as an essential way to hammer home the middle school’s curriculum. Students learn to think critically and use the math skills that they are learning in class, plus they gain an understanding of how the stock market works. “This sparks an interest in investing,” Mr Vantresca said this week. “It’s a very appropriate time to do this with these kids. [The game] really supports our curriculum.”

As it stands right now, most student groups are earning considerable returns on their investments. One group in sixth grade math teacher Becky Sasso’s class has already earned $129,000, giving them hold of first place in the state for their division. These sixth graders are participating in the Fifth and Sixth Grade Division; other groups include high school students and adults.

Groups that place highly in the state can look forward to recognition and a trip to Wall Street to see the stock market in action.

Although all sixth grade teachers comment on how the critical thinking that the stock market game requires benefits students in their everyday studies, sixth graders this week marveled at learning to understand what is usually thought of as an “adult topic,” the stock market.

Before Scott Suhoza started playing this game, he didn’t know anything about the stock market. Now he has convinced his parents to let him invest a small amount of money on E-Trade. “I learned what the stock market was all about,” he explained, mentioning the help he received from his father. “It’s going to help my in the future. I know how to make and lose money, and now I know a lot about volume.”

Josh Tenenbaum also has turned into a bit of a stock shark. He admits that his group invested in what their parents invested in, companies like The Gap, Yahoo, and Motorola. He said that his group, and most groups for the matter, didn’t really care what the “hot stocks” were, they just followed practical advice from their teachers and parents. “I used a lot of my dad’s stocks,” Josh explained.

And if there was any question concerning sixth graders’ abilities to grasp the often befuddling concepts of the stock market, they were erased Tuesday morning as sixth grade clusters welcomed Newtown resident Robert Rodia of People’s Securities as a guest speaker.

Mr Rodia discussed the ins and outs of the market, and went over a brief history of investing in America. He covered topics ranging from the difference between the Dow Jones and NASDAQ markets, ticker symbols, and the Internet’s impact on the stock market. Students also handed sheets of paper filled with questions to Mr Rodia at the beginning of the presentation.

Through these questions, it was evident that the stock market game with which the sixth grade has toiled has yielded an impressive ability to ask complex questions to leaven their understanding.

One student asked why the NASDAQ and Dow Jones trade at different volumes. Another student inquired about how a stock split benefited companies and how high could a stock rise before having to split. Still another student asked why stocks were always traded as fractions.

Mr Rodia answered each question, and doled out some “free” advice to those students looking for hot stock tips. “It’s a serious game,” Mr Rodia warned, commenting on the fact that there is no one “sure fire” stock. “It all depends.”

But these sixth graders who huddled together in the middle school’s cafeteria Tuesday will have some time before they can really let the dice roll. Each student let out a sigh of surprise when they learned that in Connecticut, the minimum age required for stockholders was 21.

But has the Connecticut Stock Market Game at least whet their appetite for future investments?

“Oh yeah,” said Scott Suhoza, emphatically.