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Economics from Here to There
Introduction
Publications of the Council for Economic Education have been
well-received by educators from a wide
range of countries. The active-learning
approach, emphasized by the Council for Economic Education network
of state councils and centers for economic education, holds strong appeal
for many educators.
Educators from the United States and those from eastern and central Europe, central Asia, and Asia recognize the importance of active-learning strategies in economic education. Educational materials created for schools in the United States, however, are not always appropriate for use in other countries because of language, economic, and cultural differences. Although economic educators in other countries have written textbooks, a need for relevant active-learning lesson plans was recognized.
To address this need, the Council for Economic Education developed Connecting the Pieces: Building a Better Economics Lesson, a publication to help teachers write better lessons. The publication shows potential writers how to identify the economics appropriate for K-12 students and develop lessons using active-learning instructional models that include integration of economics into other subject matter, higher-order thinking skills, and assessments. A chapter is also devoted to the importance of conducting pilot tests and using the data for lesson revision.
Grants from the U.S. Department of Education, for the Cooperative Education Exchange Program provided the funding for Connecting the Pieces, as well as annual Training of Writers programs. As the faculty of this innovative program, we have had the privilege of working with many creative teachers from the United States and countries of the former Soviet Union and eastern and central Europe, and more recently from central Asia and Asia who aspired to become better writers of economics lessons.
This publication includes six lesson plans developed by participants in the international Training of Writers program conducted by the Council for Economic Education through the Department of Education grants. This publication is unique among the publications written by participants as a result of the Training of Writers program. In this publication, each of the lessons was written by international groups during the training seminars. Six lessons have been developed for elementary, middle and high-school classrooms. The lessons cover a variety of economic concepts and complement other curricular areas, such as language arts, world history, art and science.
We hope that you and your fellow teachers will find these lesson plans useful and rewarding.
Foreword
It is a great pleasure to introduce Economics from Here to There. This publication contains six lessons for K-12 classrooms. It is unique because each lesson was developed by teams of writers from Belarus, Bulgaria, Indonesia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Uzbekistan and the United States. The authors of these lessons were participants in the Training of Writers program, developed and conducted by the Council for Economic Education as part of the Cooperative Education Exchange Program. Since 1996 the Training of Writers program has helped teachers from both the United States and emerging market economies learn how to write instructional materials, through intensive writing exercises, expert guidance, feedback from peers, and follow-up work by e-mail.
The development of the publication was made possible through a grant to the Council for Economic Education from the United States Department of Education, Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools under PR Grant # Q304B050002. The Council for Economic Education extends its appreciation to the Department of Education and Ms. Rita Foy-Moss for her support as Program Officer. The program is carried out in coordination with the U.S. Department of State.
The Council for Economic Education is grateful that the United States Congress had the foresight to recognize the need for economic education in emerging market economies and the vision to see how an international education exchange program such as the CEEP in economics and civics could benefit U.S. students and teachers.
Special thanks are extended to the editors – Mary Suiter, Economic Education Manager, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and Bonnie Meszaros, Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship, University of Delaware – for conceptualizing this publication and for their perseverance and dedication in bringing it to press; and to Patricia Elder, Barbara DeVita, and Mary Blanusa, Council for Economic Education, for their continuing support of the Training of Writers program and this publication.
Robert F. Duvall
President and Chief Executive Officer
Acknowledgements
Writers
| Salimuv Abduvakhab (Uzbekistan) |
Sam Agami (Virginia) |
Elena Chislari (Moldova) |
Evegeny Gorbunov (Russia) |
| Kathy Heyse (Indiana) |
Andrew Hill (Pennsylvania) |
Christy Johnson (Washington) |
Zuzana Krakova (Slovakia) |
| Penny Kugler (Missouri) |
Rumyana Lalova (Bulgaria) |
Steven Lauridsen (Illinois) |
Svetlana Mikheeva (Russia) |
| Terri Modlich (Colorado) |
Cheryl Morrow (Alabama) |
Jibin Park (California) |
Tom Roby (Virginia) |
| Eka Sepashuili (Georgia) |
Katherine Van Horn (Illinois) |
Zinaida Visotskaya (Belarus) |
Agung Waspodo (Indonesia) |
| Vickie Weiss (Michigan) |
Anna Zachorowska-Mazurkiewicz (Poland) |
Lile Zakauskiene (Lithuania) |
Wanda Zubrzycka (Poland) |
Editors
Bonnie T. Meszaros |
Mary C. Suiter |
Copy Editor
Lawrence State
Designer
Susan K. Todd
The Council for Economic Education gratefully acknowledges the funding for this publication by the United States Department of Education, Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools under PR Grant # Q304B050002. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Education.
Copyright © 2006, Council for Economic Education, 122 East 42nd Street, Suite 2600, New York, N.Y. 10168. All rights reserved.
The activities and worksheets may be duplicated for classroom use, the number not to exceed the number of students in each class. Notice of copyright must appear on all pages. With the exception of the activities and worksheets, no part of this book my be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN 1-56183-636-2
Downloads
The lesson plans from Economics from Here to There are available for download below in PDF format.
- Lesson 1 Which One Do I Want More?
The students listen to a short story in which Anna must make a choice and learn about opportunity cost. Given a selection of paper bags containing small items, the students must select one bag and decide if they wish to keep the bag or exchange it for another. Once the students make their decision, they state their choice and identify their opportunity cost.
- Lesson 2 The Candy Kids - Supply Of And Demand For Candy
The students participate in and discuss two games aimed at giving them an understanding that consumers and producers respond to incentives and behave according to the Law of Demand (as illustrated by the first game) and the Law of Supply (as illustrated by the second game).
- Lesson 3 The Classy Card Company
The students form the Classy Card Company to produce greeting cards. The company has orders for birthday cards from two different businesses. Because of scarcity, the Classy Card Company cannot produce enough cards to fill both orders. The workers at the Classy Card Company must make a decision about how to allocate the cards they produce.
- Lesson 4 Rush Hour
Incentives that people face influence their everyday decisions. Using a road-map game board, the students simulate driving to work and choose driving routes based on incentives. The students analyze how changes in incentives cause changes in behavior. They also learn the difference between monetary and non-monetary incentives.
- Lesson 5 Who Gets To See The Game?
Scarcity forces people to allocate goods and services in a variety of ways. In this lesson, the students use cost/benefit analysis to analyze various methods of allocation, first for tickets to a football game and then for organ transplants.
- Lesson 6 Don’t Be Discouraged!
The students develop a classification chart identifying which workers are employed and unemployed, determining which workers are counted as unemployed and classifying what type of unemployment each worker is experiencing. The students calculate the unemployment rate in a nation and learn why this is considered an imperfect measure of unemployment.