Or, let's say you've already got a solid economics program in place, but you're looking for new resources, new techniques, new lesson plans.
Here is a list of tips and resources to help make this year the year Economics is front-and-center in your curriculum...
Action Step #1: Training, It's Good for You
Top performers -- athletes, business professionals, artists -- are always improving their skills, so they can reach their peak potential.
Teaching is no different.
Make it a goal to attend an economics and personal finance professional development workshop in this year. You'll not only expand your knowledge of economics and personal finance, but you'll also network with your peers and return to your classroom with new-found energy and enthusiasm.
Where to Find Training
Not sure where to begin?
Why not ask your department chair, principal, district curriculum director... a fellow teacher? Most likely, they will have advice on local, national and even online training opportunities.
Don't forget you can find economic and personal finance workshops through the Council for Economic Education's university-based network of Centers for Economic Education. Just click on your state, find your nearest Center and contact them to get a list of upcoming workshops in your area.
Can't attend face-to-face training? With budget cuts and time constraints, it's definitely a challenge today.
You can also find online teacher training through the Council for Economic Education. These online training modules take you behind-the-scenes of the Council's most popular programs. You'll explore content and find out how to teach it to your high school students. You'll watch videos of teachers using the lessons with their students. Plus, seasoned economic educators will show you how to deliver the lesson plans for maximum impact with high school students.
Call us toll-free at 800-338-1192 and our friendly staff will help you find the economic and personal finance training you need.
Action Step #2: Get (Even More) Comfortable with Economics
After you've received training, it's time to expand your knowledge base and keep your skills sharp.
Pay close attention to the economics in your daily life -- in the news, discussions among your students and friends, in your own household.
Teach the World Around You
Economics is, literally, all around you, isn't it? Look at the daily news: economics dominates the headlines, day after day. And I'll bet your students are even talking about economics... and their parents... and your fellow teachers... well, you get the picture.
How can you use these headlines and once-in-lifetime events as teachable moments? The Handy Dandy Guide to Economic Reasoning, from the Great Economic Mysteries series, is a quick and easy way to introduce your students to economics.
With only 15-30 minutes of effort and using common "mysteries," you'll start building an economic foundation that helps your students see the role economics plays in their daily lives.
There's even a 'Guide to Writing Your Own Mysteries,' which shows you how to monitor headlines and craft your own economic mysteries. It's pretty simple, give it a try.
Strategy: Think Like An Economist (It's Okay, Really)
Action Step #3: If You Buy One Resource, Make It Virtual Economics
How would you like to have your own economics and personal finance coach on call, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?
Virtual Economics is your private tutor -- mentor, coach, confidant, call it what you will -- for teaching economics and personal finance.
This CD-ROM (you didn't think it was an actual person, did you?) helps you understand how to:
- teach 51 economic and personal finance concepts
- build your vocabulary (which you can also use with your students)
- find activity-based lesson plans to demonstrate the concepts to your students
- correlate lessons to your state economic standards
Activity-based Lessons, From Planning to Delivery
Imagine if you could attend a seminar or teacher workshop and discover the latest strategies and techniques for teaching economics and personal finance to high school students. Virtual Economics gives you on-going training, support and -- most importantly -- the tools to confidently teach economics and personal finance in your classroom.
You'll also leverage technology to make your lesson planning easier. Virtual Economics makes it easy to plan, find and deliver a memorable lesson for your students.
Strategy: Be the Economics and Personal Finance Ace in Your School
Resource: Virtual Economics CD-ROM
Video Demonstration: How a teacher uses Virtual Economics for lesson planning -- Watch Video
What It Does: Virtual Economics helps you plan, find and deliver economic or personal finance lessons.
What Makes It Unique: You use technology to build your economic and personal finance knowledge base, and search a database of lesson plans by keyword, publication and state content standard.
Action Step #4: Leverage the Great High School Economics Package
So far you've introduced your students to economics using mysteries, and you have a tool that helps you plan, find and deliver lesson plans.
How do you make economics the cornerstone of your social studies or business courses?
Start thinking beyond the usual textbook-lecture approach and concentrate on supplemental materials that include activity-based lesson plans, visuals and ready to use worksheets and handouts.
Wouldn't it be nice to increase student participation and an understanding of economics principles at the same time? With interactive exercises like simulations, classroom projects and in-class discussions and debates, you'll be amazed at how easy it is to capture -- and hold -- the attention of your students.
A great resource to help you kick-start your economics curriculum is The Great High School Economics Package. It's an easy and affordable way to add economics to your curriculum, regardless of what courses you teach.
From simple introductory lessons to in-depth activities, simulations and projects, this package is anchored by three popular print-based programs:
Each year hundreds of thousands of students learn high school economics from these three resources.
Remember, these aren't textbooks: these are supplements to your primary instruction, lesson plans that help you demonstrate and apply economic and personal finance concepts.
Your Students Learn by Doing
These trusted resources use activity-based lesson plans, simulations, projects and worksheets to give your students a thorough understanding of economics. Whether your students need a detailed knowledge economics, or just a basic foundation in the terminology and principles that pop up in their other courses, this hands-on approach means your students are actively applying economics to the world around them.
Capstone: Exemplary Lessons for High School Economics is the most comprehensive set of high school lesson plans developed by the Council for Economic Education.
There are 45 supplemental lessons and 62 student activities that cover fundamental economics, microeconomics, macroeconomics, global economics, personal finance and entrepreneurship principles in-depth.
These lessons will strengthen your regular economic course, and help you cover the free market principles -- pricing, taxation and more -- your students need to know in their business and marketing courses.
Think of Capstone as a cookbook: when you need to make an economic dish your students will enjoy, you pull it off the shelf, find a recipe and follow the step-by-step instructions.
Strategy: Make Your Classroom Sizzle with Capstone
Economics In Action: 14 Greatest Hits for High School Economics uses fun, activity-based lessons to ease your students into the world of economics.
It's ideal as an introduction to economic reasoning, common terminology and need-to-know concepts, using an active-learning approach.
Light on math and quantitative data analysis, these lessons can be used in any course where you need to expose your students to core concepts like markets, property rights and more.
Strategy: Activity-based Lessons Make Your Life A Whole Lot Easier
Focus: High School Economics is the original "Silver Bullet" curriculum guide for teaching high school economics. It contains tried-and-true lessons that help you cover introductory economics, microeconomics, macroeconomics and global economics principles in your classroom.
Again, it's a supplement, and includes tips on how to teach economics in high school.
Action Step #5: Focus on Infusing Economics Into Other Subject Areas
You're probably under a time crunch, right?
Lesson prep. Your administration wants this and that... and more of that.
Oh, and who can forget: you've got teach to the standards.
So how can you cover more content, without dedicating more time and effort?
The Focus on Economics series illustrates the role economics plays in the social sciences, such as Geography, World History, and Global Economics.
Focus on More Content, with Less Work
These supplemental lessons help you cover two important social studies topics, with one simple lesson. The Focus series includes:
Strategy: Why Do Twice the Work? Cover Multiple Disciplines with One Lesson
Resource: Focus on Economics:
Geography
Sample Lesson: Why Nations Trade (PDF)
What It Does: Introduces your students to comparative advantage, specialization and decision-making.
What Makes It Unique: Your students read and discuss a narrative, simulate a country's capital structure and discuss the rational for their decisions.
Action Step #6: Explore U.S. History and Civics and Government with an Eye on Economics
Do history courses have to be out of sync with current events? Despite our best efforts, history can seem... well, like a distant, abstract thing of the past.
But historical events are brimming with economics. After all, history is about individuals making choices, at that point in time, by weighing the costs and benefits of their actions.
So, if you frame historical events in the context of costs vs. benefits, you can help your students be "present-minded" about the past.
Watch a slide show of How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of History.
You can take the same approach with Civics and Government: how does economics influence political choices? By understanding the costs and benefits, you'll show your students how citizenship is relevant to their daily lives.
Give New Meaning to History, Civics and Government
Focus: Understanding Economics in US History is one way to put current economics events in perspective by relating them to past events. You'll use mystery-based activities -- What caused the Great Depression? Would you sell yourself into indentured servitude? -- to weigh the historical costs and benefits of taking one course of action over another.
You can then ask your students to think about a present-day scenario, where they apply the same reasoning and analysis as they did for a past event.
Strategy: Be Honest -- Would You Sell Yourself Into Bondage?
Focus: Understanding Economics in Civics and Government looks at the role economics plays in the functioning of government, citizenship and rules and regulations.
Is there a relationship between economics freedom and political freedom? What is the role of government in the economy? What about health care? Unemployment?
You'll explore how economics influenced the United States Constitution, look at key economic cases before the United States Supreme Court, the purpose (and kinds) of taxes and much more.
Strategy: Want to Predict the Next Presidential Election Winner?
Action Step #7: Avoid the Financial Mistakes of the Past
Let's not forget personal finance.
What if your students left high school with the skills, confidence and knowledge to make wise financial decisions? manage a budget? understand credit? save their earnings?
They would have a big financial advantage in the future, wouldn't they?
From Money Basics to Advanced Wealth-Building Strategies
Financial Fitness for Life is a complete personal finance program that covers:
- Earning an Income
- Saving and Investing
- Credit and Spending
- Money Management and Budgeting
You can use all the lessons as an integrated curriculum, or pick-and-choose the individual lessons that meet your teaching goals.
Financing Your Future and Risky Business are two DVD-based resources that use 15-minute videos
to introduce core personal finance content, then reinforce the content with listening guides and activity-based lessons.
Watch a Financing Your Future Video Clip
Watch a Risky Business Video Clip
Let's face it: your students are about to be bombarded with credit card offers, complicated insurance policies and other mind-boggling financial decisions...
... will they make wise decisions? With your help, they can.
Strategy: Don't Just Invest in the Market, Invest in Student Success
Action Step #8: Ace the AP® Economics Exams
If you're teaching AP Economics, make sure you use the Advanced Placement Economics program.
Advanced Placement Economics is packed with teacher-planning resources, as well as supplemental lesson plans to reinforce the college-level economic content your students need to know to tackle the exams with confidence
Buy a workbook for each of your students. That way, they'll have rigorous exercises, activities, worksheets and practice exams at their fingertips, plus key readings that help them master those sometimes tough-to-understand textbook readings.
10 Tips for Teaching AP Economics
For additional tips on teaching AP Economics, read 10 Tips for Teaching an Effective AP Course.
Strategy: The Key to Scoring a 5? Practice, Practice, Practice... and MORE Practice
Resource: Advanced Placement Economics
Sample Lesson: The Economic Way of Thinking (PDF)
What It Does: Regardless of what questions are asked on the AP Exams, if your students understand how to apply economic reasoning to the test questions, they'll have a big, confidence-boosting advantage. This lesson shows them how to think like an economist.
What Makes It Unique: You use planning resources and supplemental lessons to make sure your students know the content, inside and out. Your students read background content, and complete exercises and worksheets. Gives you a rigorous, methodical way to introduce, reinforce and assess your students' knowledge of college-level economics
(AP is a registered trademark of the College Board which was not involved in the production of and does not endorse this website or materials.)
Action Step #9: Grab Some Face Time in the Computer Lab
Okay, so far you've used technology to plan, find and deliver in-class lessons (with Virtual Economics), and you've looked at a number of supplemental, print-based lesson plans (everything from The Great High School Economics Package to the Focus series to Financial Fitness for Life).
But your students are pretty "wired," aren't they? Chances are they spend a lot of time online. Here's your opportunity to supplement your print-based lessons with computer-based activities...
Find Free Lessons at EconEdLink.org
With EconEdLink.org, you'll have access to over 135 free high school economic and personal finance lesson plans.
And your students will always be "doing" things, like:
- Reading articles
- Analyzing online data sources
- Listening to audio
- Watching video
Some teacher highlights you'll find on EconEdLink.org include:
These lessons will not only give you practical, interactive online lessons, they will also help your students build and fine-tune their computer-literacy skills. And because the students are working at their own pace, EconEdLink.org gives you a chance to spend one-on-one time with your students... not to mention stake your claim in the computer lab.
You don't need to use all of these resources, just find the one -- or ones -- that fit your teaching style and meet your instructional goals.
If you have any questions about these resources, give us a call and we'll explain them in more detail: 800-338-1192.
Good luck, here's to making this year your best teaching year ever!
© Council for Economic Education
About the author:
Troy D. White is the Senior Director of Sales and Marketing for the Council for Economic Education, where he travels around the U.S. helping K-12 teachers find economic and personal finance lesson plans for their classrooms. He can be reached at twhite@councilforeconed.org or 212-730-1791.
Special thanks to Martina Krivankova, Kathy Miles and Sean Tubridy for their contributions.
You may post, share and distribute this article, as long as you don't change its content. Please provide the following attribution: Courtesy Council for Economic Education, www.councilforeconed.org
