Economics

Today in class we presented different economic topics to the class. When I first heard we were going to teach about economics I was a little nervous. I had never really learned much on economics and if I did I don't remember it at all. The only thing I remember learning was about the stock market during Computer Literacy my sophomore year. I was given a certain amount of money to invest in three stocks and had to watch the progress and compare them to the S & P 500. But that was college. I don't think I ever learned anything in elementary school! 

I was really surprised by how many different ways my classmates incorporated economics into a classroom setting. My topic was scarcity and economic decision making. Scarcity is when people have unlimited wants, but the resources are limited. If resources are in high demand, but are scarce this drive the prices up. This leads to economic decision making. When products are scarce people have to make choices about how they will spend their money. Will the spend more for the product? Go somewhere else to get it? Or just go without it altogether? These are questions people face everyday and are the basic foundations of economics. 

My peers talked about other things such as: The difference between micro and macroeconomics, the different concepts, approaches to teaching economics, the decision making model, and ways to break down economics in the classroom.

One way to to incorporate scarcity in the classroom is by giving students fake money and giving them limited resources to "buy". The students will have to make decisions about what products are the most necessary. There are also many different online games that students can play to learn about economics. In one classroom that I observed in they had a classroom store. When they showed good behavior they received money that they could save up and spend in the store. This taught them that when money is limited they need to prioritize what they want the most. I think this is a really fun way to help manage the classroom and teach economics at a young age. 

I feel that it is really important to start teaching students economics at a young age so that when they learn about it later on in more detail they will have a basic understanding!

Here's the link to my slides: Slides

and my thinglink