DAILY LESSON PLAN TEMPLATE

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Name: JT Donald Unit Topic Big idea(s) Essential Question(s) Standard(s(/ Benchmark(s) Economic Challenges (Unemployment, Inflation, and Poverty) What are some examples of and what causes economic injustice? Who are some main players and what are their roles in addressing to economic challenges of America? SSEMA1 The student will illustrate the means by which economic activity is measured. b. Define Gross Domestic Product (GDP), economic growth, unemployment, Consumer Price Index (CPI), inflation, stagflation, and aggregate supply and aggregate demand. c. Explain how economic growth, inflation, and unemployment are calculated. d. Identify structural, cyclical, and frictional unemployment.

Lesson Plan Starter/Opening Is unemployment always a bad thing? Give students to write answers. Discuss. Lead this into slideshow that shows differing views on unemployment. Learning Activities & Assessments/Work Session - Use the presentation to introduce the students to the basics of unemployment. - NOTES on the basics (types, calculations, vocab) ! ACTIVITY: Identify the type of unemployment described. Selected xamples from worksheet. - Show the information on the current data. - Discussions on the following questions: ! Does the government cause unemployment? Multiple perspectives: introduce to Keynesian and Classical views. Let the students talk through these things. 2 minute write on their own discuss views again Closer - Current Events going on around them! - Explain the Congressional debate from January 2014 fighting to extend unemployment benefits to 99 weeks. - How should unemployment benefits be addressed? * Post Lesson Add In - Activity to create your own unemployment benefit proposal - Show them the quotes from Obama, Newt Gingrich, and Ronald Regan on these view

- TRANSITION into the next section (Inflation)

Relating to Current Event Analysis This will be analyzing the highlighted areas from the lesson plan above. As you can see from the lesson plan above, this session was over the topic of macroeconomic challenges, and more specifically, unemployment. As part of my pedagogy as an educator I want to give my students as much real-life applicable knowledge as possible. I see the application of knowledge as a paramount aspect of realizing and fulfilling your maximum potential as a human. This current event relation was strategically placed towards the end of this lesson as I wanted the students to see the real-world application of the material they were just introduced to. It also went well as it came right after a relatively difficult discussion over differing views of economic schools of thought (Classical vs. Keynesian). The Classical vs. Keynesian discussion required a lot of thinking and was very theoretical in nature. With that said, this current event discussion gave the students to see that economics is not simply theory, it is happening all around them everyday. While speaking about current events, I still want to provide the students with multiple perspectives of the events. I do not believe these two concepts are exclusive of one another, as a matter of fact, I feel like they should always come together. Now to elaborate on the specific events of this class session. As soon as the previous discussion had been wrapped up and briefed, we transitioned into the discussion about the debate in Congress from January of this year about extending unemployment benefits to 99 weeks. I gave a very brief introduction and then brought the students attention to a few quotes that I found online. The first quote was Newt Gingrich who stated that the unemployment benefits can be extended, however they must come along with a training requirement (such as an associates degree). Another quote was from Barrack Obama who stated that the extended unemployment benefits would put a spark in the economy and actually create jobs. Then to give a polar opposite to the Obama sentiment, I showed the students a quote from former president Ronald Reagan that stated that unemployment benefits are paid vacation for lazy members of society. Showing each of these quotes to the students sparked some great discussions about what they think the role of government should be for supporting the unemployed. An overwhelming amount of the students agreed with Newt Gingrichs sentiment that all unemployment benefits should come along with some sort of training requirement to make the recipient more competitive in the marketplace. However, there were a few students that actually agreed with Reagan. One real bright spot from this discussion (in my mind) came when I was throwing in some random facts to get a discussion going. I threw out some numbers that came out in 2012 showing that Hawaiis unemployment benefits are upwards of $50,000, which is greater than minimum wage in the state. Many students stated that with unemployment benefits that high, they would rather sit at home and pull that check rather than go to work. However, this had the students talking about an array of economic injustices such as a living wage and poverty within the working class. It was really neat and rewarding to see students thinking like this. Overall, I felt like this current event analysis went pretty well. As stated earlier, relating to current events is a very important aspect of my teaching style, so this was one of many occasions. I felt that this particular relation sparked some good discussion and came at a great time to release students from their theory-induced daze and allow them to freely speak about current economics-related events and some hot topics.