Hi I'm Jess Winkelaar from the Minnesota Center for Social Studies Education. Welcome to the elementary economic resources video. The purpose of this video is to share powerful resources with classroom teachers. I will walk you through three websites to highlight resources for teaching economics. Please pause this video as needed to write down a website address or discuss an idea with your teaching team.
[A woman, Jess, stands in front of a screen. The title of the screen reads “Elementary Economic Resources” in yellow.]
We will begin on the on the CSSE website MNCSSE.org.
[Screen changes to read mncsse.org]
The first resource on this website is a curriculum guide; it's the first thing under Popular Resources. This is a set of curriculum guides that offers a benchmark by benchmark explanation of economics and all the benchmarks along with an accompanying resource list.
Right below that is a video series called the Doing Social Studies Video Series, this is also a grade level specific benchmark by benchmark overview of what each benchmark asks students to be able to do and know and also it has suggested strategies.
[The screen changes to the website. A mouse moves across the screen locating the tabs as Jess talks about them. Page scrolls up and down.]
To get into economics we're going to start with a career video. Social Studies Career Videos are recorded by the experts in Minnesota and the elementary economics video features Professor Donald Liu and he introduces economics directly to elementary students and talks about how they might apply economic skills in future careers.
[Mouse clicks on Career videos and scrolls up and down the page.]
Getting into economic reasoning we have a visual and the visual at the very top, on the top menu bar, will lead you to this screen and what you'll do is click on the elementary economic visual and it will show you how to lead students through making economic choices.
[Screen changes to the Inquiry visuals page. Mouse clicks on one of the visuals and it opens in another screen. Visual is a circle surrounded by four colors: red, yellow, blue and green.]
This visual is accompanied by a Powtoon video which is featured right next to it, the economics video.
This features two students and they go through the economic reasoning process using a PACED grid.
This video has a guide for you as a teacher to lead your students through this decision making process.
[Screen returns to inquiry visuals page and clicks on powtoon video.]
The Minnesota Center for Social Studies Education you can link or go directly to a partner called the Minnesota Council on Economic Education.
[Screen changes and reads mcee.umn.edu]
This website features a wealth of opportunities and resources for classroom teachers. On this website we are going to start by letting you know about a professional development opportunity that's available for you to bring literature to life through economics.
And so under the professional development tab, right under “teachers”, you can see this workshop is listed. It's called ‘Using Children's Literature to Teach Economics’. This is an annual event that's a fantastic professional development opportunity.
[Screen changes to MCEE website. Mouse moves the page down to the tab.]
Going under the “teacher” tab to “resources” there are 2 items to highlight. The first one is the right on top, there are some award-winning economics lesson plans that are super accessible and really get the economic concepts and bring them to life for students.
[Mouse clicks on teacher tab at the top of the screen and then down to resources.]
If you scroll down to the bottom of the teacher resource page there's another curriculum guide that is specific for the economic benchmarks. And so this one is also to help you, as a teacher, really understand and lay out what the standards are asking students to know and be able to do when they are economists.
We're going to go to one other website called Classroom Clues. This is a great website that can take economic concepts. it's a searchable website that takes a particular concept, such as scarcity, and you can search it and it will bring up picture books, children's literature, that highlights that particular economic concept.
[Screen changes to read classroomclues.com. Transitions to home page of the website. Mouse scrolls up and down.]
So there are hundreds of picture books on the site and some of them even have some teaching ideas and strategies accompanied to them.
These economics websites give you resources as a teacher and also give your students some tools to think like economists.
[Screen changes to the original page from the beginning.]