Unit 1, Day 2: What's Left After Your Paycheck

Lesson 2 of 6 in Unit 1, Your Money Plan

School-year day

Day 2 of 180

Time

20-minute core + 30-minute extension (50 minutes in all)

Teacher Talk with MystrS. Checked October 27, 2026 (Pacific time). Tags: Teacher Talk, Finance, Unit 1, Day 2, Paycheck, Gross, Net, W-4, Withholding, High School, MystrS

Goal: Students read a sample pay stub, tell gross pay from net (take home) pay, name common withholdings, and describe what Form W-4 is for without giving tax advice.

Materials:

• Printed sample pay stub for a fictional worker (Jordan Lee). Fields: gross pay, federal income tax withheld, Social Security, Medicare, state income tax (label as example only), net pay. No real SSN. Numbers are round teaching figures, not IRS limits.
• One page "Gross vs net" word bank and sentence frames.
• Optional shared device: IRS, About Form W-4 and IRS, Tax withholding for teacher projection only.
• No device option: printed stub and word bank only.
• ELL/IEP: color highlight gross in one color and net in another before the lesson; allow partner read aloud.

Core (20 min)

1. Hook (3 min). Show the sample stub with net covered. Ask: "Is this what Jordan takes home?" Reveal net. "Today we name why the two numbers differ."
2. Gross and net (5 min). Teach from the IRS Understanding Taxes tutorial, in plain words: Gross pay is what the employee earns. Net pay, or take home pay, is what the employee receives after deductions. Write both on the board. Students label gross and net on their copy.
3. Withholding walk (7 min). Point to each line: federal income tax withheld, Social Security, Medicare, and (if shown) state tax as an example. Say: "Withholding is money taken from a paycheck during the year toward taxes. Form W-4 is the form a worker gives an employer so the employer knows how much federal income tax to withhold. We are not filling a real W-4 today and we are not giving tax advice."
4. Pair check (3 min). Partners answer: (a) What is Jordan's gross? (b) What is Jordan's net? (c) Name two things that came out between them.
5. Close (2 min). "A budget uses net pay, not gross. Tomorrow we build Jordan's budget from the take home number."

Extension (up to 30 min)

• W-4 teacher demo (10 min). Project the IRS About Form W-4 page. Show the form title and the idea that workers can use the IRS estimator when life changes. Do not collect student answers. Do not enter real student data into any estimator.
• Pay stub math (10 min). Give a second fictional stub with one blank net. Students subtract the listed deductions from gross to find net.
• Vocabulary sketch (10 min). Students draw a simple funnel: Gross at the top, arrows for each withholding, Net at the bottom. Label in English; optional home language gloss on the side for ELLs.

Check for understanding:
Four short answers on a half sheet:

1. Gross pay means ___.
2. Net (take home) pay means ___.
3. Name one withholding from today's stub.
4. Form W-4 is used for ___ (one plain sentence).

Accept answers that match the board definitions and name withholding or W-4 purpose without inventing dollar rules.

Standards (2021 National Standards for Personal Financial Education, Jump$tart/CEE):

• Earning Income 12-7c; Earning Income 12-9a (partial: the lesson explains what Form W-4 is for; students do not complete one); Earning Income 12-6.