What This Blog Is About

Many states test school children for competency in economics. Teachers struggle to find and create materials to teach economics content, particularly to primary students. Content that will teach to the National Voluntary Standards for Teaching Economics will meet this need.

The National Council of Economic Education has developed 20 voluntary teaching standards. For the standards, there are benchmarks for grades four, eight, and twelve. This content is based on the grade four benchmarks. Coverage of these benchmarks leads to a table of contents containing 20 lessons, ranging from You Will Have to Make Choices About Things You Want to Rewards and Penalties Can Change How People Act to Just What Is Money Anyway to The Government Can Help Solve Economic Problems.

Some of the teaching standards have many grade four benchmarks and some have none for grade four. Therefore, there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the 20 teaching standards and 20 lessons. The lessons cover no more than five benchmarks per lesson and, with the exception of Lesson 20: The Government Can Help Solve Economic Problems, cover only the standards for which grade four benchmarks exist.

Lessons are designed to follow the Effective Teaching Lesson Plan model. Each lesson consists of five parts. Part 1 has a hypothetical story to focus students on the topic of the lesson. Part 2 contains teaching narrative that defines terms and explains concepts. Part 3 presents exercises for guided practice and independent practice. Part 4 contains material for reteaching and for enrichment. Part 5 contains assessment questions in true/false and multiple choice formats. Accompanying teacher's materials explain how to use each part of a lesson.

Every 10 to 14 days, I will post new material. The table of contents will be next, followed by lessons.

Please share your comments. My goal is to demonstrate to a publisher that this content should be a text/workbook.
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COPYRIGHT © 2007 by Robert D. Sandman

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Teachers and their students may use this content as follows: Robert D. Sandman hereby grants you a nontransferable license to use the content in connection with your classes. The content is for your personal, noncommercial use only and may not be reproduced, or distributed, except that portions of the content may be provided to your students in connection with your instruction. You must include this notice on all copies that you provide to students. You may not sell, license, auction, or otherwise redistribute the content in any form. Your use of the content indicates your acceptance of these conditions. Thank you.