Teachers, I could use your help!

I am student teaching in a HS and am having a tough time making lessons last 40 min. Any words of wisdom? Subject is Economics. I appreciate any and all suggestions!

Re: Teachers, I could use your help!

DH teaches English so unfortunately I don't that he would be able to offer any ideas...

I hated Economics. My Economics teacher in highschool had a certain format for tests and he told you word for word what to study. I got good grades on my tests and was exempt from the final. Thank God because I didn't want to study all that boring stuff again from the beginning of the semester.

Re: Teachers, I could use your help!

What kinds of activities are you doing? Are you running out of time or not having enough material for one day?

What my administrators LOVE to see is a variety of activities--

1. Warm up/bellringer (could be a few questions on the board or a transparency related to the HW or reviewing yesterday's lesson or introducing stuff they need for today's lesson.)

2. Direct instruction (I teach something--I am a foreign language teacher so I might do vocab or a grammar lesson on PowerPoint or the board.

3. Guided practice -- have them do a worksheet or a few examples WITH you (I have never taken econ so I have no idea what kinds of things you have to do.)

4. Independent practice or group work -- they can work by themselves or together on some kind of worksheet or graph or something like that.

5. Closure (this one is hard for me... what to do as closure....) You could ask the students questions, you could ask them to outline what they learned that day, some teachers make an "exit pass" where the students take 3-4 minutes and answer a few questions and have to hand it to you at the end of the period, in order to "exit".

If you are going over time, and have too much stuff, you will be able to wing it after a while, and stop them in the middle of something or push off an activity to the next day if you need to.

If you RUN out of stuff, which does happen, you can let them start their homework and if it's something they need help with, you can do the first example on the board. OR, you can do a review game of some sort, like Jeopardy.

One of the teachers at my school does a game called BLUFF. The class is divided into two groups. They turn the chairs to face each other
like this:

> > > < < <
> > > < < <
> > > < < <

You then ask one side a question. The students that know the answer stand up. Each kid standing is one point. The students that don't know the answer remain seated. OR they can try to BLUFF you and stand up for more points even though they don't know the answer. However, you call on ONE student to answer. (NO TALKING DURING THE GAME). If the student knows the answer, his team gets the points (count however many are standing). If the student gets it wrong, they LOSE that many points. Then the other team gets to guess.

You could do this with questions from that day's lesson or as a review. Normally, we use this as a review game.

Let me know if you need any clarification on this game.

I hope this helps!

Re: Teachers, I could use your help!

FM

Re: Teachers, I could use your help!

THANK YOU!!!!!!

Re: Teachers, I could use your help!

My HS Ecomonics teacher had us follow a specific stock everyday. We all picked a different company, and at the beginning of each class we looked it up and discussed if anything in the news influenced it going up or down.

Re: Teachers, I could use your help!

I am a high school teacher. I teach College and Regents level Economics.

You can FM me with specific questions... been teaching it for 5 or 6 years now.

Do you use the newspaper in class? As them to fins an article that reflects a concept you just taught?

I have my students do a project I call "A Penny SAved"... it's a personal finance savings plan so they can start building a nest egg... It's like a financial WEight Watchers and they work with a buddy to control their spending. They keep a journal, have certain categories they cut back on and meet in groups throughout the week to keep each other on track.

I wish I could trade places with you. I never have as much time as I'd like.

Re: Teachers, I could use your help!

Thank you SO much, ladies. I am having a tough time with this...

Re: Teachers, I could use your help!

Make sure you have topics that require discussions, as well. I would imagine this would be very important in an economics class. I teach music for 1-8th grades, and I try to have discussions in every single grade level because it gets the kids thinking, rather than just sitting there. Also, it leads us to things that I may not have thought to talk about with them. You'd be surprised the discussions you can have with 8 year olds! So just imagine it with high school students. I knwo this seems like a very simplistic idea, but it really is essential for getting the students to take an active role in their education.

Re: Teachers, I could use your help!

Thanks so much!