Teaching Economics

Before learning about economics, I believed that economics was just about how much net worth a region had. However, I have learned that it is so much more.

Based on this definition, as an educator, I need to tell my students about all resources from our region and other regions that are not unlimited. During a lesson on economics, I will teach the students about how the world is broken up into different regions just like New York State is broken up. As an educator, I will also have to teach the students about money, net worth, water supply, food supplies, and natural resources such as oil. It is important for students to understand what each one of these things is and how it is used in different parts of the world. Part of economics also has to do with the population in a region versus the amount of natural resources in that region.

Economics can also be brought into science, history, career education, ELA, and many other subject areas.

Within these subjects, it is easy to include the topic of scarcity. Scarcity is when there is not enough resources for everyone in that area to use. For example, you can use bread. Tell your class that there is only a limited number of loafs of bread being delivered on that given day and ask them to discuss what will happen if there are only a certain number of loafs of bread. Discussing major issues within our society and other societies is very important to the growth and understanding of the students.

When talking about scarcity, it is important to include that scarcity is essentially supply and demand. Supply is how many resources there are and demand is how many resources the people need. To teach this, the teacher could tell the students that there is only one pencil in the class and that whoever bids the highest, gets to have that object. After one student has bought the object, tell the class that there are several more but at a lower price. This will demonstrate what supply and demand is.

Here is the link to my two slide!