High School Resources for Teaching Economics
The Economic Education team at the St. Louis Fed has hundreds of free, award-winning resources for teaching economics, including active learning lessons, videos and much more.
Check out these ten active learning lessons to make your teaching stick!
Opportunity Cost
SNACK TIME!! Using the PACED decision framework, students compare and rank different types of pretzels. Economic decisionmaking is something your students will use not just in their econ class, but throughout their life.
Intro to Demand
Create your classes’ demand curve for a beverage of choice through this fun active learning simulation. They will demystify the demand schedule and demand graph when they create one using their own preferences!
Minimum Wage Debate
Go beyond learning about price ceilings and floors and have your students think critically about how a price floor affects people’s lives. Students will be asked to take different sides of the minimum wage debate and learn how to argue different viewpoints.
Market Structure
Gum allowed in school?! Students act as gum firms competing for your business. The catch? Students are in different market environments like monopoly, oligopoly, and perfect competition, and they learn firsthand how the level of competition affects the ultimate price of gum.
Trade
Time for a sweet treat: Students participate in a candy trade, demonstrating the idea that benefits of trade increase as the number of trading partners increase.
Unemployment
Make unemployment and labor force participation, as well as other calculations, understandable by creating a classroom labor economy. Students play various roles in the labor force, which makes calculating the unemployment rate much more relatable.
GDP
You teach GDP = C + I + G + NX, but there is still a lot of misunderstanding around NX (net exports). Your students will finally realize that imports do not actually decrease the value of GDP.
Monetary Policy
This active-learning lesson demonstrates how monetary policy affects the economy while also getting your students UP AND MOVING in a lesson they will certainly remember.
Choosing a Career
Bring the workforce into the classroom! Help your students understand how training and experience impact their future income in this ACTIVE learning simulation!
Creditworthiness
Students become the credit providers in this simulation and get to actively assess a borrower’s Students become the credit providers in this simulation and get to actively assess a borrower’s creditworthiness!
