IB Economics First Lesson Plan

Use this 55 minutes first-week plan to teach ib economics course launch through one concrete decision. Students practice the IB chain of definition, diagram, explanation, evidence, and balanced evaluation from the first lesson. The goal is to establish how economics class works: make a claim, use a model, test the claim, and revise it. It also gives the teacher useful diagnostic evidence without beginning with a long lecture.

The classroom prompt

A city considers charging drivers to enter a congested center and using the revenue for transit. Students identify scarcity, affected stakeholders, intended incentive, likely consequences, and conditions for success.

Put the question where every student can see it and do not supply vocabulary before students commit to an answer. Their first explanation becomes the evidence you use during the debrief.

Materials and setup

Use a local congestion-pricing case with a short neutral fact sheet, stakeholder cards, and blank axes.

Open the IB Economics course guide if you want students to test the same idea on an interactive model after the paper task. A projected version is enough; students do not need accounts for this lesson.

Run the lesson

Answer key and teacher moves

• Road space at peak time is scarce and unpriced congestion imposes external costs on other travelers and residents.
• A charge raises the private cost of driving and can reduce quantity demanded, with size depending on elasticity and alternatives.
• Revenue use affects equity and political acceptability but should not be confused with the efficiency mechanism.
• A strong evaluation is conditional on charge level, transit availability, exemptions, enforcement, and distributional effects.

Do not give credit for the correct direction alone. Ask students to name the changed determinant, identify the curve or quantity that changes, and connect the change to the final outcome. A complete explanation contains a cause, a model move, and a result.

What to collect

Collect one diagram and a paragraph containing a claim, counterclaim, evidence need, and conditional judgment.

Most likely misconception: Students call a policy good or bad from one stakeholder's perspective without separating efficiency, equity, and implementation.

Support and extension: Provide stakeholder sentence starters. Extend by comparing a congestion charge with a quantity restriction.

A clean closing question

End with: What changed, what stayed fixed, and what evidence proves your conclusion? That sentence works as the final written check because it forces students to separate a cause from the movement it produces. Collect it, scan for the misconception above, and use the first three minutes of the next class to repair the pattern if needed.

This resource is ready to copy into a slide, handout, or LMS assignment. If you assign it for points, publish the success criteria before students begin: correct model, correct direction, and an explanation that links the two.