Integrating the Six Core Economic Principles In Your Classroom

Some strategies for teaching the Six Core Economic Principles or Handy Dandy Guide, (HDG)) to introduce and reinforce the “economic way of thinking” to your students for Grades 4-12.

The Six Core Economic Principles or the Handy Dandy Guide (HDG)

1. People choose.
2. People’s choices involve costs.
3. People respond to incentives in predictable ways.
4. People create economic systems that influence individual choices and incentives.
5. People gain when they trade voluntarily
6. People’s choices have consequences that lie in the future

• Use The Great Economic Mysteries Book, A Guide to Teaching Economic Reasoning, Grades 4-8 (17 mysteries) or Grades 9-12. (35 mysteries) , excellent and highly recommended publications of the National Council on Economic Education. With both lesson books, students solve interesting and intriguing economic mysteries from everyday life in an interactive way. Very easy to use and fun for both teacher and students! A weekly mystery solved in class would go a long way toward reinforcing the principles of economics and the economic way of thinking. ( Price: $21.95 each + 20% shipping and handling. Fax or mail P.O.or send check to Suzanne Buck, Michigan Council on Economic Education (MCEE), 41500 Gardenbrook Rd., Novi, Michigan, 48375-1313. Fax@ (248) 596-9562 or call (248) 596-9560 if you have questions. (A 25% discount for Developmental Econ Ed Partners (DEEP) member schools is available on NCEE curriculum materials)

• Use regular newspapers or student news periodicals such as Junior Scholastic, Weekly Reader, etc. or editorial cartoons on an overhead transparency to have students analyze local, regional, state, national, and international current events using the Core Economic Principles or Handy Dandy Guide. Let them choose their own articles or cartoons as often as possible. Work in pairs, or alone, to find and explain as many of the Core Principles as they can that are at work in the article they have chosen. Teams report out their analysis to the rest of the class. Editorial cartoons lend themselves very nicely to warm ups and cool downs, especially when you find a good cartoon that you want students to analyze. (Grades 4-12 template forms for written reports of news articles, titled “AS THE WORLD TURNS” and for editorial cartoons, “AS THE WORLD CHUCKLES” combine economic, civic, and geographic analysis and can be easily adapted to your needs in the classroom. Contact John Noling a (231) 767-7269 or e-mail at jnoling@remc4.k12.mi.us and a copies ATWT and ATWC will be sent to you.
• Use the 24 by 36 inch color poster of The Six Core Economic Principles as a reference point for class discussion and teaching content in all curriculum areas. Affix poster in prominent position on front-side wall or front wall of classroom. When the teachable moment arrives when you can show your students one of the principles at work in their world, physically move to the poster, point to it, and read or paraphrase its application to what you are teaching. It won’t take long for students to see and understand how the economic way of thinking can apply to situations all around them, and not just in Social Studies class. (Price: $5.00 each, plus $5.00 shipping and handling, or $4.00 each, for 5 or more, plus $6.00 shipping and handling. A joint project of Muskegon Area Intermediate School District and the Michigan Council for Economic Education. Send check or P.O. to Janet Valliere, MAISD, 630 Harvey St. Muskegon, Mich., 49442. Orders accepted by fax: (231) 773-1028. Questions call Janet at (231) 767-7227)

• Of course, introduce the Six Core Principles of Economics at the beginning of the school year or semester if possible. Spend time finding everyday examples of each that come from the lives of your students. After introducing with examples, reinforce them regularly with students using your text, newspapers, everyday life examples whenever possible. Refer to them often and ask students to demonstrate their existence in human behavior. In writing assignments, include applying one or more of the Six Core Economic Principles in your assessment rubric or Focus Correction Area,(FCA), you will be specifically looking for in grading their written or oral report, or group discussions. People are always making choices that involve costs with limited resources, responding predictably to incentives, creating new rules of the game in their economic systems, and voluntarily trading, so there are virtually unlimited examples to reinforce the principles. 

• Use lessons from Adventures in Economics and U.S. History. These hands-on lessons for upper elementary and middle school (some activities can be used in high school) provide opportunities to use the Handy Dandy Guide to analyze the decisions of historical figures such as: those involved with the Virginia Company (king, entrepreneurs, investors, colonists, Indians), tories and patriots, slaves and slaveholders, apprentices and masters. Also, lesson 14 in Volume II uses a decision grid to analyze the decision of a family moving from Virginia to Michigan. These books are available for $19.95 each. Order forms, a list of lessons and a list of internet links to support the lessons are available online: www.econ-fun.com. 

Your teaching ideas for integrating the Six Core Economic Principles into classroom instruction are welcome and will be credited to you and shared with other teachers! Please contact the Michigan Council on Economic Education (MCEE) at (248) 596-9560, fax (248) 596-9562, or e-mail to David Dieterle, Ph.D., President of MCEE, at david@mceeonline.org  A wide variety of free services, including workshops and consulting, are available to you and your school through our Educator Associates located all over Michigan. Let us help you create the productive, knowledgeable, and responsible citizens we all need. Call on us!