Banking · MI Bank · Lesson Plan
Welcome to MI Bank — Teacher Lesson Plan
A short, ready-to-teach lesson that walks your class through signing in to MI Bank for the first time — finding their accounts, reading a balance, and understanding their transaction history. Before students can bank, save, or run a classroom economy, they have to log in and find their way around. This lesson gets everyone there in one class period, using a free guided tour that mirrors the real MI Bank screens.
For Teachers
Lesson at a glance
- Topic
- Online Banking · MI Bank
- Grade Level
- Grades 4–12
- Resource Type
- Lesson Plan + Interactive Activity
- Estimated Time
- 20–30 minutes (one session)
- Format
- Whole-class demo, then 1-to-1 or pairs at devices
- Materials
- Student devices or a projector · an MI Bank class you have set up · printed sign-in slips (class code, username, PIN)
What Students Learn
Learning objectives
- Sign in to MI Bank with a class code, a username, and a PIN
- Open MI Bank from the student dashboard
- Tell the difference between a Checking and a Savings account, and read the balance of each
- Open a transaction register and read what each row means — date, type, memo, amount, and running balance
- Recognize the “Make a move” actions: deposit, withdraw, transfer, send, and pay a bill
- Sign out safely, especially on a shared device
Standards
Standards aligned
- Jump$tart: Spending & Saving 1, 4 · Financial Decision Making 2
- CEE: Saving 1, 2
- Digital literacy: safe sign-in, keeping a PIN private, and signing out on shared devices
For Teachers
Before you teach
MI Bank lives inside Money Instructor Classroom at classroom.moneyinstructor.com — a separate, privacy-first app from this website. A teacher Full Membership is required to create and run the class; teachers sign in with “Sign in with Money Instructor,” the same account you use here. Students never need an email address — each one signs in with a class code, a username, and a PIN you hand out.
Everything in MI Bank is a simulation: every balance is pretend money for practice, so there is nothing at risk and families never send money to school.
Set up your class before this lesson (about ten minutes):
- Create a class — MI Bank generates a class code that looks like
MIB-AB12. - Add your students — a first name, initials, or a nickname is all you need (no full legal names).
- Print sign-in slips — each student’s class code, username, and PIN. PINs are shown only once, so print right after adding students.
- Keep it simple to start — a Bank-Only class (Checking and Savings) is the cleanest fit for this first lesson. You can add a class store or a full classroom economy later.
Want the full click-by-click walkthrough of every button? See How to Use MI Bank.
Key Terms
Vocabulary
- Class code
- The short code (like MIB-AB12) that tells MI Bank which class you belong to.
- Username
- The name your teacher gives you to sign in. It is not secret.
- PIN
- Your private number for signing in. Keep it to yourself, like a password.
- Balance
- How much money is in an account right now.
- Checking
- The everyday account for money you spend and move.
- Savings
- The account for money you want to keep and grow.
- Deposit
- Money going into an account.
- Withdrawal
- Money coming out of an account.
- Transfer
- Moving money from one of your accounts to another.
- Transaction
- One entry in your account history — a deposit, a withdrawal, or a transfer.
- Register
- The full list of an account’s transactions.
- Sign out
- Safely leaving your account when you are done, so no one else can use it.
The Lesson
Lesson plan
Estimated time: one 20–30 minute session (shorter if students already have devices and sign-in slips in hand).
Lesson sequence
- Warm-up (3 min). Ask: “What is the first thing you have to do before you can use any app or website?” Lead the class to the answer: you sign in. Today we sign in to our classroom bank and look around.
- Model the sign-in (5 min). Project MI Bank. Show the three things every student needs from their slip: the class code, their username, and their PIN. Walk through the two sign-in screens — class code first, then username and PIN. Remind students the PIN is private, like a password.
- Students sign in (5 min). Hand out sign-in slips. Students sign in at classroom.moneyinstructor.com/students/login. Circulate and help. (Forgot a PIN? Reset it from your roster in seconds.)
- Find your money (5 min). Students open MI Bank from their dashboard and find their two accounts. Have everyone say their Checking balance out loud, then their Savings balance. Point out that the big gold number is the balance, that Checking is for everyday money, and that Savings is for money you want to keep.
- Read your history (5 min). Students open Checking and choose “View all transactions.” Read one row together — the date, the type (deposit, withdrawal, transfer), the memo, the amount, and the running balance. Ask: “What was your most recent transaction?”
- Explore the moves (3 min). Point out the “Make a move” buttons — deposit, withdraw, transfer, send, and pay a bill — and explain what each is for. (Students will actually use them in later lessons.)
- Sign out (2 min). Have every student sign out, and explain why that matters on a shared computer.
- Wrap-up (2 min). Quick check: can everyone say their balance and name one transaction?
Guided practice — the interactive tour
For a low-stakes rehearsal, have students play the free interactive activity Welcome to MI Bank: Log In & Look Around before — or instead of — using their real account. It mirrors the real MI Bank screens with pretend demo data (a practice class, a practice student named Alex with PIN 1221, and sample Checking $39.00 and Savings $34.00 balances) and guides students through five goals: sign in, open the bank, read the register, explore a move, and sign out. Nothing is saved, and students can practice again as many times as they like. Students open it from their signed-in student account.
Assessment — check for understanding
Students have met the goal when each one can, without help: sign in to MI Bank, say the balance of their Checking and Savings accounts, and point to one transaction and explain what it was. Use it as a quick exit ticket.
Differentiation & extension
- Grades 4–6: stop after reading balances — keep the focus on signing in and finding the gold number.
- Grades 7–12: read the full register and open a monthly statement; discuss how the running balance changes with each transaction.
- Next step: once students can log in and look around, move on to actually moving money — a natural bridge to the next lesson in the MI Bank series.
Walkthrough
What students will see
Interactive Activity
Welcome to MI Bank: Log In & Look Around
A free, guided tour that mirrors the real MI Bank screens with pretend demo data — students sign in, open the bank, read a balance, and view their transactions. No score, nothing saved. Students open it from their signed-in student account.
Discussion
Discussion questions
- Why should you keep your PIN private, even from a friend?
- What is the difference between your Checking and your Savings account? When might you use each?
- Pick one transaction in your register. What does it tell you — what happened, and how much?
- Why is it important to sign out when you finish, especially on a computer other people use?
- The practice tour used pretend money and a pretend student. How is your real MI Bank account different?
Related Resources
Keep going with MI Bank
Set up your classroom bank
MI Bank and the Money Instructor Classroom apps are included with a full membership — along with worksheets, lesson plans, and teacher resources across every financial-literacy topic.