Lucy Mehraban, a 5th grader at Emerson School in Ann Arbor, has won 2nd place in the national InvestWrite writing competition. InvestWrite is the culminating activity for The Stock Market Game, an online financial market simulation for students in grades 4–12, and more than 13,000 students participated in the 2016 competition.
“Lucy had a personal goal of becoming a better writer this year, and it is hard to imagine something more validating than this,” said Ellen Chenier, Lucy’s 5th grade teacher at Emerson School. “InvestWrite gives our students a chance to demonstrate the real-world finance and business concepts they’ve learned. Lucy’s essay certainly did that, and it was an outstanding example of her expository writing skills.”
Lucy’s classmates Alexandra Ulery, Kira Saporsky, and Katie Swallow were also recognized at the awards ceremony for winning first place in the state of Michigan for The Stock Market Game. This team of students’ invested $100,000 in the simulated stock market and earned a bigger return than any other students in the state.
The InvestWrite competition challenges students to write an essay describing a company they think is a good long-term investment, and to explain why. InvestWrite and The Stock Market Game are components of a daily classroom economy program Mrs. Chenier and her 5th grade teaching partner Jen Kime facilitate, which gives students first-hand experience buying and selling goods, marketing, running businesses, paying taxes, and investing.
