Social Studies Summer Series Part 5: How to Teach Economics Skills

Kirsten 0:07

Hey there and welcome to another episode of the social studies teacher podcast. This is part five of the social study summer series. So we are ending off this summer series with teaching economic skills. And as always, I'm going to be sharing with you some tips on how to teach economics, as well as some different examples and activity ideas along the way. I will also be sharing with you have a resource that you can utilize to help you consistently teach economics or any other type of topic in social studies throughout the year. So I'll be sharing with you information on that at the very end.

Kirsten 1:28

Teaching economics and the free enterprise system to upper elementary can seem like something that is a Herculean task, it's like well, number one finding resources for it was so hard for me when I was teaching. But with the right approach, and with the right resources, it can be both engaging and educational. By breaking down complex concepts into simple steps, and hands on activities engaging activities, you can empower your students to understand the fundamentals of economics and how they apply to the world around them. So let's talk about ways you can effectively teach economics and the free enterprise system in the classroom.

Kirsten 2:11

The first tip I have is, as always, start with the basics. Make sure you're introducing students to the basic concepts of economics such as, what are needs versus what our wants, goods versus services, producers versus consumers, and supply versus demand. Use relatable examples, and you can even use their names if you want. Like, let's say there's a student named Bob in your class. And maybe Bob really likes candy, a specific type of candy like Airheads or Sour Patch Kids. And you could ask students, okay, if he purchases, Sour Patch Kids and Airheads, are these goods? Or is this a service? And so you can kind of kind of go with that. And also, producers versus consumers? If Bob is purchasing this candy? Is he producing it? Or is he consuming it? And then maybe even if the candy itself are needs, or are they wants so you can play with it, make it fun, make it relatable to their everyday life and this will help them grasp those concepts a lot more easily.

Kirsten 3:32

Number two is to make it interactive. Incorporate interactive activities into your lessons to keep them engaged and reinforce key concepts. One example is to organize a classroom market or classroom store where students can buy and sell goods using play money, or money that they might have earned in the classroom. And you can do this as a grade level. This is actually something we did as a grade level for when I was teaching fifth grade at a school. We had a school store classroom store, and every nine weeks they could take their cash that they've earned and accumulated throughout the nine weeks and purchase a variety of items. You could also conduct a mock auction to show how prices are determined by supply and demand. That could be really fun. You can either do like a live auction, maybe even get a real auctioneer, hire somebody who's a real auctioneer, or you could do a silent auction if that's something you don't want to you know get too crazy over. But it could be interesting to note some objects that are in more demand and how that affects the price. Maybe you're using some classroom cash or something like that. And the item that is highly requested people keep bidding on that one item the price goes up whereas another item, maybe not as popular, not as many people are wanting it that demand is low. So the prices they're going to be low for whoever is the highest bidder for that. So that can be really, really fun to do, maybe at the end of the year, or you could even try to do it quarterly, however often you want to do that.

Kirsten 5:11

Tip number three is to utilize visual aids. So charts, graphs, diagrams, these can all help show economic concepts in a way that is easy for students to understand. You could show some type of graph or visual representation of the production process, how you know, money is circulated around in the United States, and also different factors of production for businesses to enhance understanding.

Kirsten 5:42

Tip number four, explore real world examples. While it's fun to make, you know, different scenarios with students in your classroom, it's also important to explore real world examples, whether it's in their local community in the state in the country or somewhere around the world, you can show students examples of the free enterprise system in action and how businesses operate, the role of entrepreneurship and the importance of competition in driving innovation and growth and how sometimes competition and what you do, compared to others can help make or break businesses. Encourage students to identify examples of businesses in their own communities, and discuss how they help the economy. You could even do something where they're comparing how people made money or how people earned money and how the economy was presently in their community and how it was in the past. So comparing past and present, and also something that I know is important. Eventually, as they're going through the grades, they're going to be learning not just about the free enterprise system, they're going to be learning about other economic societies and economic concepts from other countries. So for example, communism, socialism, just different types of how people are earning money and spending money.

Kirsten 7:08

Tip number five is to promote critical thinking. encourage critical thinking by asking students to analyze economic issues and maybe propose solutions, give them hypothetical or real scenarios, and ask them to think about the economic, you know, results or effects of different like what would happen if they were to change something. This can help them develop problem solving skills, and understand the complexity of economic decision making.

Kirsten 7:40

Tip number six connect to current events. Relate economic concepts to current events and issues to show students how economics is affecting the world around them. Thinking about inflation, unemployment, international trade, and even environmental sustainability encouraged students to think about these type of economic factors and how they can affect what people are able to do as far as getting jobs or losing jobs.

Kirsten 8:10

The last tip I have is to encourage collaboration. Foster collaboration and teamwork by incorporating group projects and discussions into your lessons, you can always assign students to work together on some type of activity, or project or summative activity, even doing some type of assessment, such as making a business plan, market research on an item that might be popular to sell or create at school, or even brainstorming solutions to economic problems in the real world. This will help them develop communication and better collaboration skills, all while learning about economics. One of my favorite projects, PBL projects that we did mostly, this was a gifted and talented project that we did was building a business. And it was a really great project I did with my third graders where they had to create a product or come up with a business plan and create some type of product or service that is related to their business that they're opening. So the whole idea is that they're opening a business, they have to decide what they want to sell, production costs, what type of you know how much they'll sell it for what kind of profit they would make, and they would build a replica or some type of prototype showing what it looks like. And we had some really fun creative prototypes that they created. So I think it's really important to get students thinking about how it's also not just adults that are creating different things and selling them. Kids can also do it so even finding different maybe do some type of research project on kid entrepreneur sure plenty out there that you can look at like Moses bows. And there is a girl from Austin, I believe. And she created this lemonade specifically with honey. And I think it's called me in the bee or something like that it's actually really good. She has different flavors and all that stuff. And I see it in stores all the time. And just kind of, you know, learning about where she got her start. That's always really something that's fun for students to learn about as well, as far as additional resources to help you teach economics.

And, of course, in an easy, simple way as possible, is to definitely consider my economics daily passages. This is all part of the daily passage bundle that I do have all together for all the domains. But you can always purchase the economics unit separately. It includes seven topics to choose from, and a total of 28 passages. So there's four reading comprehension passages per topic, with a total of 28 passages, three multiple choice questions. And these are all for, you know, variety of topics for third through fifth grade students, their seven quizzes with unit pacing guides glossary with key vocabulary words. So all kinds of good stuff. And of course, can't forget those answer keys, those are also included as well. And if you are a member of the Smart and Simple Social Studies membership, you can access all of these daily passages that I've been mentioning in this social studies summer series. There's a variety of passages for a variety of domains and you are able to access it in the supplemental resource library, just click on that picture and download it.

Now, you've been hearing likely about the Smart and Simple Social Studies membership. And if you're wanting to learn more about how you can join the membership, I will be opening up the membership in just a few weeks. So definitely make sure you're staying in the now you can go to the southern teach.com forward slash s s waitlist and type in your name and email address. And I will let you know about information on how you can sign up when it is open.

Alright, thanks for listening to the social study summer series. Hopefully, I know it's summer and you're probably relaxing with maybe a margarita in your hand or your reading at the pool. But I am so grateful that you are taking the time to listen in whether it is in real time or it's sometime in the future. I do love seeing different comments and feedback about these episodes. And that's why I wanted to start this podcast in the first place. It'll be almost a whole year that I started this podcast. So I am so grateful for you tuning in. All right. Well that's it for today. I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day.