Curriculum Updates 11/1/25
Maybe it’s the change in the weather or the rapidly approaching end of the semester, but we’ve found ourselves doing a fair bit of self-reflection. A few thoughts to share with you: observing lessons in sequence and hearing directly from teachers and students has been incredibly valuable. Seeing how our materials function in classrooms has helped us identify opportunities to make lessons clearer, more focused, and more effective. We’re deeply grateful for the chance to learn alongside educators and for the thoughtful feedback you continue to share; it plays a key role in helping us strengthen Econiful’s curriculum for everyone.
October's significant lesson plan changes:
Practice Scoring: The lesson now includes an opportunity for students to apply the rubric to two samples and discuss their scoring rationale. The review game is now an optional activity that can be used if you have longer classes.
Practice Scoring: Like in 1.11, we now have an opportunity for students to apply the rubric to two sample stories and discuss their scoring rationale. The review game is now an optional activity that can be completed outside of class or turned into an in class if you have longer classes.
3.7 A Closer Look at Unemployment
Debrief Refocused: We added a new slide to focus the debrief on the central question: To what extent is the official unemployment rate a limited indicator of economic health? This addition encourages students to move beyond surface-level observations and think critically about the usefulness and limitations of unemployment data as an economic indicator.
Revision Forthcoming
A Practical Guide to the U.S. Economy (Unit 3 Summative Assessment)
We found that students were getting bogged down trying to locate the “right” data points as they worked on the Economic Dashboard in Part 3 and lost sight of the bigger goal. We’re restructuring Part 3 to emphasize analysis over data hunting.
We’ll also update Parts 1 and 2 to include built-in support for locating reliable economic data sources.
We will continue to make changes as we observe and implement lessons at the high school and community college and receive feedback from our members.
If you want to follow along each day as we reflect on the lessons, join us on the Econiful Community Facebook group.