Students get bored pretty quickly.
I’ve been trying to incorporate activities to change things up a bit for my AP Macro, AP Micro and Economics students.
Here’s my usual routine: I have them take notes (before the lesson), I give the lesson, they work on some multiple choice and short answer questions. Next section, repeat. It gets old!
So, let’s make things a little more relatable with some economics activities (which are perfect for distance learning). Here are some of my go-tos:
Nearpod
Free, but you are limited to 100MB of storage space
This site has students join an activity with a code. The teacher then controls the pace. As the teacher, you can see every student’s screen and how they are participating. I like to call out hints as I see them drawing supply and demand graphs, and many students ask me to check theirs to see if they are doing it right (which I love!). I’m sharing links to some of my favorite Economics Activities Nearpods. These links will allow you to make a copy of the activity, and you can edit it if you would like.
- AP Macro 1.4 Practice Shifting the Demand Curve
- AP Macro 1.5 Practice Shifting the Supply Curve
- AP Macro 1.6 Equilibrium and Changes to Equilibrium Practice
Marginal Revolution University
Free
First off, this site has some great videos – for teachers to refresh their knowledge and to reinforce concepts for students. There are courses – one for Principles of Macroeconomics, and one for Principals of Microeconomics.
But what I think is even better is their Interactive Practice. These are amazing economics activities for all economics students! They are quick, challenging, and interesting. I have students do them for an assignment and submit their results. I even use these with my regular Economics classes.
Econ Lowdown
Free
This site is provided by the St. Louis Federal Reserve. There are many, many, many resources here! Articles, activities, videos, audio recordings, etc. They have a “syllabus” of activities for AP Macro and AP Micro. Typically, the activities have the students watch a video and answer questions about that video. You will need to set up classes, add students to the classes, and then distribute login information to the students. As a teacher, you get a nice report of how many times students watched the video and how many attempts they took on the quiz.
If you are familiar with FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data), Econ Lowdown has activities that involve students analyzing economic data. It’s fabulous!!
Check those sites out! They are really easy to incorporate into your lessons, or maybe have students do them as homework.
Happy Teaching!
2 Responses
Quick question, in your usual routine, you say that you have your students take notes before the lesson, how do they take notes? (BTW, purchased both your Cornell sets, they look amazing!) Are they doing this before class looking at the Mr. Clifford presentations or reading a textbook? Thanks!
Hi! I am using Clifford’s presentations. I strip out all of the practice questions and leave just the things they need to take notes on, then post those slides to our OneNote Class Notebook for them to go through. Our district just adopted the Krugman textbook, so I’m going to eventually switch over to having them take notes out of the book. Hope that helps!