Learning to Teach Economics Project

Dr. Smirnova created an activity for us to complete to give us a better understanding of the Economics topic of Social Studies while giving us the experience of working cooperatively with our peers. She gave us a list of numbers with a task assigned to them and gave us the option to pick one of the numbers to contribute to the classroom PowerPoint on economics. I chose the first number and task which was to "Research the definition of economics and explain how you will introduce the term to the first grade and to the 5th grade students." For each number that we picked, we also had a partner. My partner and I had to work together to contribute our task to the classroom PowerPoint.

The classroom PowerPoint was called Engaging Students in Studying Economics

When first deciding on how we were going to begin this task, we made it clear that we needed to assign ourselves roles. These roles were our own separate tasks that we needed to complete for the PowerPoint so that we each could contribute equally and learn from the information that we each gathered for the task. We split the task in half in order to be experts on what we were assigned and to learn from one another on what we gathered. My role was to research the definition of economics while my partners role was to explain how you will introduce the term to the first grade and to the 5th grade students.

There are many definitions to the topic of Economics. I researched throughout the internet the various definitions of this term. Each definition that I came across was slightly different and added information that was not present in other definitions. I recorded the most effective definitions that consists of the main ideas of economics. I gathered definitions from Free Dictionary.com on the term Economics, the American Economic Association, Lionel Ribbon's personal definition, and a webpage dedicated to Economics called What is Economics? I felt that these were a great variety of definitions for this term. 

My partner and I communicated with each other our ideas and what we should contribute to the PowerPoint slides. I taught my partner the definitions that I researched and she taught my the different ways to introduce the term. We agreed on what to add to the slides and then we contributed it. This is a great Cooperative Learning lesson because we became experts on the information that we researched based on our roles, we taught each other the information that we learned, and we contributed to the class. This is a great example of the Jigsaw Method because we each had a responsibility and we needed to complete our roles in order to contribute to the class. This is a great activity to use in the classroom when teaching Economics because students will be able to become experts on a certain aspect of Economics and will be able to get the opportunity to learn more about Economics from their peers.