Transcription
Hey, how you doing, micro teachers? This is Jacob Clifford. I made a brand new resource to help you out this year. It's a pacing guide.
Now, in my in-person workshops, in my online institute, I specifically tell teachers, "I'm not going to give you a pacing guide." The main reason why is microeconomics is different. Some people have it for a year. Some people have it for only a semester. And if you do it second semester, that's a little different than if you have it first semester. You're going to have less time. On top of that, you're usually teaching seniors. You're going to have prom or different activities, and it messes things up. So, somebody can't just give you a calendar and say, "Just teach this."
But I have seen a lot of new teachers make a huge mistake, which is thinking that every unit is equally as important and every topic is equally as important. And that's just not the case. Some topics you can do in like 10 minutes. Others are going to take you two or maybe even 3 days.
Before we jump into it, the first thing I want you to notice is that these recommended days I give you are just instruction days. You have to add an additional 2 or 3 days to do more practice, to take the unit exam, and to do exam corrections. If you've been to one of my workshops, you know the importance of exam corrections. It's the most important thing. Don't skip that. Make sure when you give a test, always go over the answers, figure out what students missed and why.
And keep in mind that each one of my suggested days is about 45 to 55 minutes. So, if you have a block schedule, you definitely have to make some major adjustments.
And of course, if you need more help, go ahead and take a look at my teacher resources, which include daily powerpoints, assignments, quizzes, activities, my teacher worksheets, and the ultimate review packet. I give teachers free trials of all these things, so you can take a look and see if it's something you want to get for your students. To learn more and get free worksheets, follow this QR code.
Now, getting into the pacing guide, I actually colorcoded it to help you out.
A red topic means stop. This is an essential or difficult concept that students need to know to move forward, and they got to do some drill and kill practice. Basically, that means students have to do it over and over and over again to verify they can master that skill.
A yellow topic means it's harder or more important topic, so spend a little extra time practicing.
A green topic is something that's a little easier that students don't have to do a lot of practice on, or something they do a lot of practice on later in a different topic.
A blue topic means you can zoom right through it. It's something that's easy: basic definitions. Just teach the concept and get out of there.
And I also included several activities that I use in the classroom and told you where to actually do it. Those are in purple. You don't have to do these activities. They're not essential, but they're definitely fun and exciting. Now, again, these are not all my activities, just a select few that teachers love to use in the classroom. If you want more activities, think about coming to San Diego for my in-person workshops during the summer.
Okay, that's enough of an overview. Let's jump into Unit One. Here is the pacing guide.
So, for each topic, it gives you the name, which has a link to a video that covers that, how many days to spend on it, the concepts or the vocab you have to cover, and, of course, a few notes from me. And again, it's colorcoded.
So, Topic 1.1, you can tell, is blue. That means you can rush right through it. It's just a bunch of vocab. Now, I'm not saying the blue topics are not important. I'm saying they are important, but it's not something you're going to come back and spend a lot of time practicing.
Now, taking a step back here, this color coding system is going to tell you where to spend your time. Obviously, you don't want to spend too much time on 1.1, 1.2, or 1.5. You can go quickly through those. Instead, spend your time on 1.4 and 1.6. A lot of new teachers spend too much time here in Unit One. It's actually a really easy unit. Don't spend too much time. Don't spend three or four days on Compare Advantage. There's not that many questions on Compare Advantage on the micro exam. So, read the notes. It gives you some information. And, of course, it also gives links to some other videos that can help you out as well.
Now, let's go take a look at Microeconomics Unit 2. You can see Topic 2.1. It's yellow. Means you have to slow down. Make sure to cover it and practice. If you do that, that makes 2.2 green because you can teach it faster, because students already understand demand. And that's the same thing for Topic 2.3. When you introduce elasticity, you start with demand. Make sure students practice; spend time making sure they get it. It makes 2.4 and 2.5 go so much quicker.
And that really applies to the days I give you as well. You can see Topic 2.3 is one full day, but Topic 2.4 is like a half a day because if students get 2.3, they're going to understand 2.4. You don't need as much time on it. In 2.5, you spend a little more time in there because now you can practice all four types of elasticity.
Now is a good time to also mention, you don't have to teach these in order. I know a lot of teachers that teach demand, then supply, then put supply and demand together and shift supply and demand before they go back and teach elasticity. How you do it is up to you, but my suggestion is, don't renumber the topics. Don't say, "Okay, elasticity is now 2.7." Don't do that. Always call it what the numbers are. It makes it easier to find resources, or worksheets, or videos, or my PowerPoints. Just keep the same topic numbers. And just tell students, "We're going out of order. We'll do Topics 2.3 through 2.5 at the end of the unit."
You can see in my notes for Topic 2.6. You can combine 2.6 with the beginning part of 2.7 when you talk about disequilibrium, shortage, and surplus. But make sure to spend a little bit of time for 2.6 Six, making sure students can spot and calculate consumer surplus, producer surplus, and dead weight loss. And, of course, 2.7 is when you put supply and demand together. Make sure to give students bunch of scenarios where they have to figure out what happens to price and quantity, and draw over and over again and get used to that labeling.
And I also gave you my first activity here, which is a pit activity. Students are buying and selling from each other. There's two activities you can run: the handshake market or the pro exchange. Click on the video. It explains how to run the activity. It's awesome.
Now, Topic 2.8 Eight is red, which means you got to slow down. This is where students bring all the concepts together. So now they're trying to find the consumer producer plus tax revenue, dead weight loss with a tax, or ceilings, floors. This is an important topic. Make sure you practice it. It says here you have two days. One day to introduce concepts, another day to practice. And if students understand 2.8, they're going to understand 2.9, the idea of international trade with imports and exports. If students get the one, they're going to get the other.
And again, it's really important for students to do a ton of drawing and practicing here in Unit 2. I have a supply and demand practice sheet in my teacher resources, or you can use one of my worksheets, which gives you a bunch of scenarios. What happens if this happens? Draw the graph. What happens if this happens? Draw on the graph. And then I walk around and give markers to the kids and say, "Okay, you go up here, draw, you know, question three, you do question four, you do five, six on my whiteboard." Students are drawing, maybe drawing at their table as well on whiteboards, and we can figure out where they're messing up, where are they messing up their labeling, and they can figure out how do you actually label in this class.
Now, taking a step back and looking at Unit 2, you can see what I was saying earlier. Not all topics are equal. You don't want to spend equal time on each one of these topics. Some are more important than others because they're going to set up things that students can learn and understand the next concept quicker.
Now, Unit Three is a lot harder than Unit Two, but it starts off kind of easy with Topic 3.1. You can go pretty quick here. Basically, students need to understand how to calculate marginal product. I give you the total product. How do you calculate marginal product? It's a skill they're going to do over and over again. Whether it's, you know, marginal cost (they did it back in Unit One with margin utility), that's something they have to feel really comfortable getting and then understand what that graph looks like: the relationship between inputs and outputs. That's all Topic 3.1.
Now, in Topic 3.2 two, it's red because you need two full days on this. One day to teach cost curves, understand what it is, another full day to practice, verify students get comfortable with it, because they're going to see it again when you do perfect competition, and then again when you do monopolies and monopolistic competition.
But then in the middle of this unit, things get easy again. You've got a couple blues and couple greens. Basically, Topic 3.3 is economies of scale. It's more like, "Do you understand the concept?" Cool. If you get it, we're done. And then students are going to learn some other ideas about maximizing profit and the shutdown rule. These are all things students don't really fully apply until you get to Topic 3.7, perfect competition. And you can really see this if you have my PowerPoints and my teacher resources. These PowerPoints are really short. They're only covering ideas, and you're not going to practice a lot until you put it all together with perfect competition later in this unit.
And I should mention, there's also an activity you can do called marshmallow towers. It's not essential, but it's super fun. It has students apply the profit maximizing rule and basically run a business by making a tower, looking at their fixed costs, their variable costs. There's a video shows you how to run the activity.
But, like I said, 3.7 is really where everything happens. It says two plus days. It's probably a day to learn, another day to finish up learning sideby-side graphs, and then another full day of like practicing. I said "2 days plus" means another full day of practice. They're going to need this unit. And the better they understand these concepts, the better they're going to do well in Unit Four. And remember, students need to be able to draw both the graph and use the profit maximizing rule using a chart. So, there's a ton of practice students have to do here in Topic 3.7. So, make sure to slow down.
Now, Unit Four is a lot easier than Unit Three, but if you didn't spend enough time in Unit Three to rush through it, students are still going to be confused here. Unit Four is basically the same stuff. You can start it off with a candy simulation. You give students different candy representing the four market structures, and it gives the characteristics of that. There's a video that shows how to run that. Then you jump into 4.1 that introduces monopolies and the idea of the market structures.
Really got to slow down, though, with 4.2 two, having them draw monopolies with a profit, with a loss, and be able to spot the area of profit, the dead weight loss, and the consumer surplus. If you spend time there, then 4.3 is easier. Instead of looking at single price monopolists, we're looking at a price discriminating monopoly, which is different. The graph looks a little different, but if students understand the first one, they'll understand the second one.
And 4.4, like 4.3, is yellow. You have to slow down, make sure students practice, see those concepts, practice a little bit, but really, you're not spending all day on those. They're not as important as 4.2. 2, and 4.5 when you bring in the idea of game theory and trying to find dominant strategy and Nash equilibrium.
Be honest, it depends on the group. Sometimes this is really easy for students, like, "Oh, we get it. We understand it." And sometimes students, like, "We don't get this." And you have to practice over and over again. It is one of those things students can only learn by practicing. So, you model it for them. You show them once and you say, "Okay, try it on your own." They mess up. It's okay. Let's try it again. Let's try it again. And eventually, over time, they're like, "Oh, okay. We get how to do this." There's some things in this class you just have to practice by doing. This is one of them.
Overall, you can see Unit 4 is pretty simple, pretty easy, and you're not going to spend ton of time except in monopolies and game theory, and you're going to move through the rest pretty quickly and do practice along the way.
Now, Unit 5 is even easier than Unit 4. Again, it's shorter, but we're switching gears and talking about the resource market, or the factor market. But the good news is just supply and demand over again. If students felt comfortable back in Unit 2 with supply and demand, they're going to feel comfortable here.
You're introducing concepts in 5.1, and go quick; it's blue. Then in 5.2, two, you're making sure they understand supply and demand, minimum wage, showing the idea of the labor market. And then there's a push-up machine activity. I have a video for you. It's probably the most fun activity in the entire class: the push-up machine.
And in 5.3, that's when you slow down and you put it all together with hiring workers, calculating the marginal revenue product, and the marginal resource cost. The unit ends with 5.4 when you talk about monopsinies. It's like a monopoly for labor. Don't spend too much time in here. Give them a little bit of practice, but you're not spending like multiple days on monopsinies. It's just not that important when it comes to AP exam.
Let's go take a look at Unit 6. You can see just by quick look, 6.1, 6.3, 6.5. These are fast, easy concepts. They're blue. You can move right through them. They have basic definitions. You're not spending a lot of time practicing.
But where you're going to slow down is Topic 6.2 and drawing externalities. Make sure students can draw all four types of externalities. Slow down, draw those graphs, make sure they can spot dead weight loss as well.
You're also going to slow down in Topic 6.4 when we talk about regulating monopolies. A lot of this you probably covered back in Unit 4 when we talked about monopolies the first time around, or the idea of per unit or lump sum taxes or subsidies. Those are concepts students saw back in Units Three and Unit 4. But it's something you want to come back to over again. Students can see it now. They've already understanding monopolies. Now, let's go back and talk about regulating a monopoly.
And again, this proves my point. Don't spend equal time on Unit 6 and Unit 3. Don't say, "Okay, I'm going to do the same amount of time." Doesn't make any sense. Unit 3 is like twice as important as Unit 6.
Okay. I hope that was helpful. If you have any questions, please let me know. If you think I made a mistake, you think it should be green instead of blue, or red instead of yellow, that's okay. Let me know. I may make an updated version of this someday.
And if you need more help teaching this course, make sure to take a look at my teacher resources. They have PowerPoints, assignments, quizzes, my worksheets, the ultimate review packet, or the ultimate exam slayer. I give these away to teachers for free so they can take a look at it and see if it's something they want to get for their students.
Thanks for watching. Till next time.