The South's Decision to Secede: A Violation of Self Interest?
Your students will consider the following questions: In deciding to secede from the Union in 1861, did the South violate its own self-interest and th...
Grade: 6-8 9-12    Published: 04/08/2005


Buying a Car
Students will assume they are shopping to buy a car. They will select a model they feel best fits their needs and budget. Students will calculate the ...
Grade: 6-8 9-12    Published: 02/01/2001


Marketplace: School Competition
In June 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that Cleveland's system of giving students vouchers to attend private or religious schools did not violate the c...
Grade: 9-12    Published: 07/15/2008


Car Loan Project
Each student will buy (hypothetically) a car that will need to be financed. The student will need to look at different options and decide which wil...
Grade: 9-12    Published: 04/07/2003


Q T Pi Fashions - Learning About Credit Card Use
Credit cards are convenient, user friendly, and at times dangerous. In this lesson students learn the joys and dangers of using credit as they help...
Grade: 6-8 9-12    Published: 11/13/2002


Related Print Lessons


The following lessons come from the Council for Economic Education's library of print publications. Clicking the publication titles will take you to the Council for Economic Education Store for more detailed information.

Capstone: Exemplary Lessons for High School Economics - Teacher's GuideCapstone: Exemplary Lessons for High School Economics - Teacher's Guide
Grade: 9-12   Published: 2003
6 of the 45 lessons are related to this lesson. The top 5 are listed below.


Unit 1: Lesson 1 - Economic Reasoning: Why Are We A Nation of Couch Potatoes?
Students examine visuals to identify an economic mystery regarding exercise and diet. They use the Guide to Economic Reasoning to analyze the costs and benefits of decisions about diet and exercise. ...
Unit 3: Lesson 17 - Creating and Using a Budget
This lesson focuses on using budgeting to maximize consumer satisfaction. It describes a flexible view of budgets, linking them to markets and market information, and demonstrates how and why budgets...
Unit 5: Lesson 24 - Government and the Environment
Students examine and discuss visuals to identify an economic mystery regarding the failure of the Endangered Species Act. They are introduced to the concepts of market failure and government failure....
Unit 1: Lesson 4 - To Choose or Not to Choose? That Is Not the Question
Students make a decision after identifying the alternatives and their anticipated costs and benefits.
Unit 4: Lesson 21 - Productivity, Diminishing Marginal Returns, and the Demand for Labor
Students produce greeting cards with a fixed number of scissors and markers, and a variable number of workers. They discuss factors affecting workers productivity and the law of diminishing marginal ...

Your Credit Counts Challenge: Trainer's GuideYour Credit Counts Challenge: Trainer's Guide
Grade: 7-adult   Published: 2004
6 of the 6 lessons are related to this lesson. The top 5 are listed below.


Section 3: Managing Credit
Participants will identify the advantages and disadvantages of using credit. Participants will recognize what credit is, what it costs, and the basic steps involved in obtaining credit. Participants...
Section 4: A Roof Over Your Head
Participants will understand the benefits and drawbacks of homeownership. Participants will understand the process of buying a home, from before house-hunting to closing and occupancy. Participants ...
Section 5: Strategies for Wealth Building
Participants will understand the concept of net wealth and how the decisions they make can cause their own net wealth to increase or decrease. Participants will explain why an early start in saving a...
Section 6: The Basics of a Market Economy
Participants will identify the characteristics of people who build wealth. Participants will recognize the primary features of a market economy including voluntary exchange, private ownership, a pric...
Section 2: Financial Institutions
Participants identify the advantages and disadvantages of using financial services from alternative financial institutions and services from mainstream banks. Participants identify the services provi...

Mathematics & Economics: Connections for Life - 9-12Mathematics & Economics: Connections for Life - 9-12
Grade: 9-12   Published: 2001
9 of the 15 lessons are related to this lesson. The top 5 are listed below.


Lesson 12: Autonomics
This lesson develops the idea of opportunity cost by examining the costs of owning and operating an automobile. Opportunity cost is the value of the next best alternative when a choice is made.
Lesson 7: The Mathematics of Nonlinear Economic Shapes: The Production Possibilities Curve
Because the resources (such as raw materials, minerals, energy, labor, equipment, machinery, etc.) that are used to produce goods and services are limited in their availability, we cannot have all tha...
Lesson 10: Powerball Economics
In games of chance, such as a lottery, economists refer to a fair game as one in which the expected return from the game equals the amount that one must pay to play the game. If a lottery costs one do...
Lesson 14: The Mathematics of Savings
Because of interest compounding, establishing a commitment to personal savings early in one's professional career can yield large long-run benefits. This lesson looks at the mathematics that underlie ...
Lesson 15: The Mathematics of Credit Card Interest and Fixed Payments
It is common for a high school student to receive multiple invitations to enroll for a credit card. In fact, an increasing number of high school students even carry credit cards. One goal of this less...

Choices & Changes: In Life, School, and Work - Grades 9-10 - Teacher's Resource ManualChoices & Changes: In Life, School, and Work - Grades 9-10 - Teacher's Resource Manual
Grade: 9-10   Published: 2002
8 of the 15 lessons are related to this lesson. The top 5 are listed below.


Unit 1: Lesson 1 - Making Choices
Students are introduced to the nature of choice making by confronting thorny problems individually and in groups.
Unit 1: Lesson 2 - Choosing Among Alternatives
Benefits and costs are defined and students use benefit/cost analysis to arrive at a group decision.
Unit 1: Lesson 3 - Choices: Benefits and Costs
In a family-type role-playing, students decided what to do with a $500 windfall.
Unit 3: Lesson 11 - My Personal Timeline
In preparation for thinking about a preferred future, students create their personal timelines.
Unit 2: Lesson 9 - What Employers Want
In a job interview role-playing activity, students learn about criteria employers use in deciding to hire employees.

Financial Fitness for Life: Pocket Power - Grades K-2 - Teacher GuideFinancial Fitness for Life: Pocket Power - Grades K-2 - Teacher Guide
Grade: K-2   Published: 2001
8 of the 16 lessons are related to this lesson. The top 5 are listed below.


Theme 2: Lesson 6 - How We Save
The class hears a story about Nicholas's family during a time of unexpected financial emergency. Students experience scarcity as they try to fit everything they want into a pocket. They learn about ...
Theme 2: Lesson 4 - Money Lets Us Choose
Students listen to a short story introducing the difficulty of making choices. They discuss and experience costs and benefits as they make a choice among alternatives, using a grid. The class makes ...
Theme 1: Lesson 3 - What Is Money?
This lesson focuses on two types of money -- paper money and coins. The students identify money and its value (ability to buy things) while participating in a money-matching activity. The students g...
Theme 3: Lesson 9 - We Decide to Spend
Students create want webs for a hamster and then for themselves. They experience spending money in exchange for goods and services when they use dimes to become consumers at a school carnival.
Theme 3: Lesson 10 - We Plan for Spending
Students construct traffic lights and use them in evaluating consumer decisions as planned or unplanned spending. Students discuss the costs and benefits of each decision.

Financial Fitness for Life: Bringing Home the Gold - Grades 9-12 - Teacher GuideFinancial Fitness for Life: Bringing Home the Gold - Grades 9-12 - Teacher Guide
Grade: 9-12   Published: 2001
8 of the 22 lessons are related to this lesson. The top 5 are listed below.


Theme 1: Lesson 3 - Decision Making
In this lesson, students learn that we must make decisions because resources are limited and wants are unlimited. Students see that sound decision making involves identifying criteria and using those...
Theme 1: Lesson 2 - The Economic Way of Thinking
Lesson 2 introduces students to the economic reasoning process or the "economic way of thinking." Students reason through two situations, using The Handy Dandy Guide, a primer on economic reasoning.
Theme 3: Lesson 8 - What's the Cost of Spending and Saving?
This lesson examines the benefit and opportunity cost of spending and saving. Students use a chart to learn how compound interest makes savings grow. Compounding provides an incentive to save or inv...
Theme 4: Lesson 12 - Making Credit Choices
Individuals face many credit choices. Students in this lesson act as financial advisors providing advice on when it may or may not be appropriate to use different forms of credit.
Theme 4: Lesson 17 - Shopping for an Auto Loan
Consumers must shop for credit just as they do for a car or a computer. In this lesson, students learn the skills they need to shop for credit by filling out a credit comparison chart for a hypotheti...

Economics in Action: 14 Greatest Hits for Teaching High School EconomicsEconomics in Action: 14 Greatest Hits for Teaching High School Economics
Grade: 9-12   Published: 2003
4 of the 14 lessons are related to this lesson. They are listed below.


Lesson 2 - Economic Decision Making
Students brainstorm ways to allocate a scarce good within the classroom. Then they work with a decision-making model that helps them make a decision about this allocation by showing them how to evalu...
Lesson 3 - Using Economic Reasoning To Solve Mysteries
Students ponder an economic mystery: Why do professional athletes, many of whom never finish college, earn far higher salaries than people who perform worthy services such as teachers and firefighter...
Lesson 6 - The Economic Way of Thinking: Three Activities to Demonstrate Marginal Analysis
This lesson consists of three activities that demonstrate different applications of marginal analysis. You may use the activities separately or do them together in one class period. In the first activ...
Lesson 9 - The Invention Convention
Working in small groups, the students simulate firms creating and producing new products. Using budget guidelines, they must decide which inputs they will purchase. They calculate their costs of produ...

Civics and Government: Focus on EconomicsCivics and Government: Focus on Economics
Grade: 9-12   Published: 1996
3 of the 16 lessons are related to this lesson. They are listed below.


Unit 3: Lesson 9 - How Are Economic Solutions to Pollution Different from Political Solutions?
After students have developed an understanding of externalities, they examine a case study of pollution in Los Angeles and determine a variety of solutions for this problem. The costs and benefits of...
Unit 4: Lesson 16 - How Can Economic Sanctions Be Part of U.S. Foreign Policy?
Students examine the data on U.S. imports, exports, and foreign aid, and explore how economic sanctions can be used to attain overall U.S. foreign policy goals. In small groups they do research to de...
Unit 4: Lesson 15 - Why Would Governments Limit International Trade?
In preparation for the lesson, students identify imported products which they and their families buy. On the first day of the lesson, the class discusses the benefits of specialization and trade amon...

Focus: High School EconomicsFocus: High School Economics
Grade: 9-12   Published: 2001
3 of the 21 lessons are related to this lesson. They are listed below.


Lesson 1: Choice, Opportunity Costs, and Decisions
Scarcity, choice, and cost are sometimes referred to as a basic trilogy of economics, because of the strong interrelationships between these fundamental concepts. Resources are limited, compared to w...
Lesson 2: Broad Social Goals of an Economic System
All economic systems strive to achieve a set of broad social goals, including economic efficiency, equity, freedom, growth, security, and stability. How these goals are prioritized, and how successfu...
Lesson 15: Until the Last Unit Equals
Marginalism is an important concept in both personal and social decision-making. Choices are rarely all-or-nothing propositions, but instead usually deal with incremental (marginal) changes -- giving...

Mathematics & Economics: Connections for Life - 6-8Mathematics & Economics: Connections for Life - 6-8
Grade: 6-8   Published: 2002
1 of the 12 lessons are related to this lesson. It is listed below.


Lesson 7 - Which Pet is Right for You?
This lesson focuses on a topic that is at the heart of economics, that of decision making. Decision making from an economic perspective requires individuals to consider both the benefits and costs for...

Choices & Changes: In Life, School, & Work - Grades 2-4 - Teacher's Resource ManualChoices & Changes: In Life, School, & Work - Grades 2-4 - Teacher's Resource Manual
Grade: 2-4   Published: 2001
1 of the 18 lessons are related to this lesson. It is listed below.


Unit 1: Lesson 4 - Choice
In this lesson, students should recognize that they have the power to choose and that they do make many choices. Many people feel powerless because they think they don't make choices.

 

 
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