I remember when I was told that I would teach high school seniors. I thought, “How cool! I’ll get the more mature students! We’ll have awesome class discussions. My students will LOVE my class!” Wow, I was wrong. Lol. That was not how my class went. My students didn’t love it. There were no awesome class discussions. Instead, class was dreadful for both me and the students and I had block periods (80-100 minute classes) lol. To top it off, I had a hard time making engaging or even mediocre economics lessons because I was trying to figure out what economics really was (has anyone else ever been in that situation too? lol).
Since that first year teaching Economics, I can say that I’ve picked up some tips that have helped make economics a more entertaining class instead of a horrific punishment for everyone. Lol. Continue reading if you’d like to figure out what I’ve learned over the years!
What is economics?
First things, first. What even is economics? Simply put, economics is the study of choices and how people make choices about scarce or limited resources (money, material, time, etc). Consumers decide what resources they want (they can’t have everything!) and producers must decide, with limited resources, how to make goods and services. (I created a Scarcity and Choices Economics Lesson. Check it out if you’re interested in using it for your class! It is a great way to introduce students to the concept of choices and how it relates to economics).
Economics seems like a simple concept to grasp, but teaching it and making fun lessons that high school students don’t hate is so difficult! Why is that?
Why don’t students like economics?
From my own experience, I think the reason why teaching and making economics lessons in the first few years was so difficult for me was because I didn’t relate economics to student life or relevant examples at all. Instead, I only drilled into students the textbook definitions of economics terms. To be honest, even the high school textbook definitions make economics difficult for anyone to understand. Lol. But you don’t have to torture your students like I unintentionally did.
How can you make economics fun!
Over the years, I’ve learned that you can make economics fun if you relax a little. You might be wondering what I mean by this. Lol. What I mean is to incorporate a lot of fun projects, activities, and examples into your economics class that relate to students and life in general!
Think of economics as an opportunity to include a lot of hands-on-activities because it is not a tested subject area (at least not in California) so you can loosely teach the standards (and not worry about teaching every single thing!) while having fun with it!
For instance, if you’re teaching students about scarcity and choices, you can give students a lifestyle activity where they must make important choices about their jobs, housing, and personal time. Check out my post if you want to recreate this lesson in your own class. To get students thinking about choices and scarcity you can also have them create a budget.
If you’re teaching about cost-benefit analysis you can give them a scenario where they must outweigh the pros and the cons of driving full time for a ride share company. (If you want to read more about how you can recreate this lesson in your class, read my blog post here.)
You can even incorporate financial literacy into your economics class! Most students like talking about money and all things related to it.
One of my favorite ways that I have students demonstrate and apply their understanding is by a Create Your Own Music Festival Project. Students love this project because they get to choose musicians/artists who will be the headliners of their music festival. You can read more about this project here.
I hope these ideas help you with your own class! If you want more project ideas for your economics class, check out my High School Economics Projects Bundle – insert link! You can also check out my TPT Store – insert link for ready-made economics lessons.
Happy Teaching!
