Unit Plan: The Market Economy Submitted By: Aaron Clay

Nevada State College EDEL 453 - Spring 2014 Karen Powell- Instructor
Unit Plan: Reflection Page
1. Where did you get the ideas and materials for this unit plan? Include website
names, URLs, book titles and authors.
I was interested in doing an Economics unit plan so I looked through the NV standards
PDF. Under E9.0 there were 5 different standards for 5
th
grade. This helped me decided
the grade level and general theme for the lesson plan. I next did a Yahoo search for
each key term within the standards for all lesson plans. Out of all the links the search
provided I narrowed it down to these: http://www.themint.org/teachers/scarcity-choice-and-decisions.html
http://www.fte.org/teacher-resources/lesson-plans/rslessons/trade-offs-and-opportunity-cost/
http://www.fte.org/teacher-resources/lesson-plans/edsulessons/lesson-1-opportunity-cost/

http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.php?lid=517&type=educator
http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.php?lid=457&type=educator
http://www.internet4classrooms.com/grade_level_help/economics_consumers_and_producers_first_1st_grade_social_studies.
htm
https://www.internet4classrooms.com/grade_level_help/economics_producer_consumer_third_3rd_grade_social_studies.htm

http://exchange.smarttech.com/search.html?q=%22producers%20and%20consumers%22
http://www.edutopia.org/pdfs/stw/edutopia-stw-financial-lit-ariel-lessonplan-goods-services.pdf

http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.php?lid=540&type=educator
http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/mods/theme_a/popups/mod01t05s01.html
http://cssr.berkeley.edu/pdfs/lowIncomeFam.pdf

http://studentservices.dadeschools.net/transition/pdfs/ts_Student.pdf
http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.php?lid=961&type=student *

http://www.fte.org/teacher-resources/lesson-plans/rslessons/demand-supply-and-the-market/

http://www.compuhigh.com/demo/economics/lesson04.html
Even by limiting my search to just these links there was a significant amount of information overload.
Much of the knowledge was above grade level and had to be put in simpler forms. For the first lesson I
got my idea from the Old Mormon Fort from one of the lesson plans I did. I converted it into an
economics lesson that took some elements from the Oregon Trail computer game. For the second lesson
I drew upon my experience and training as a baker to develop a lesson for demonstrating that
consumption and production can occur simultaneously. For the third lesson I wanted to make a person
connection to students in regards to how their school consumes resources to produce an education
service. For the fourth lesson plan I wanted the students to see how a family income places limits on
what people can do, but that there are ways to prioritize. For the last lesson in the unit I wanted to take a
broad concept such as supply and demand and put it in an interesting format for the students. As a
trained pastry chef I keep track of things like chocolate prices and I know children love chocolate so this
would spark interest. Since this was such a complex economic issues I really had to focus on keeping it
simple. Basically my technical training and experience in college level economics courses provided all
the knowledge I needed for this lesson.





Unit Plan: The Market Economy Submitted By: Aaron Clay


Nevada State College EDEL 453 - Spring 2014 Karen Powell- Instructor




2. What were the easiest and most challenging parts of writing this unit plan?
The easiest part of this unit plan was choosing a strand. I have always had an
interest in economics so this seemed the best approach to take for writing a
Social Studies lesson plan. My political beliefs essentially lean towards a free
market economy so this would definitely be something I could teach with
enthusiasm. This gave me the strand, grade level, five standards, and an
overall theme to the unit plan. The hardest part of putting this unit plan
together was the disparity of what was expected from me in 5
th
grade to
what is now expected of current 5
th
graders. The market economy was strictly
a high school level concept when I was a younger student. Now 5
th
grade
students are introduced to it, but in simplified terms and conceptualization. In
the back of my mind throughout developing this lesson plan I wanted to
explain it in high school terminology rather than elementary school terms.
What is expected from a 5
th
grade student has drastically changed in the
decades since I was an elementary school student. This change in
expectations made this a little bit difficult for me.






3. What suggestions do you have for yourself for the next time you write unit
plans?
This time I wrote everything down in notes gradually through the semester to
develop an outline of my unit plan. I invested too much of my time in making
notes because these pieces of paper became easily disorganized or lost.
Next time rather than doing notes I will fill in information within the unit plan
template. By using the template I will develop a rough draft quicker and not
have to type everything out when the assignment is nearing the due date. I
think this will actually save me 2/3 of the time I actually spent on this project.
Notes increase the instances of redundant work which is in fact wasted effort.
It is best to type out what I want to do onto a word template first since editing
Unit Plan: The Market Economy Submitted By: Aaron Clay


Nevada State College EDEL 453 - Spring 2014 Karen Powell- Instructor
on the computer is relatively easy. Basically I need to alter my approach to
be more time efficient and its likely I might be able to turn in future
assignments early.