AP Macroeconomics Pacing Guide: A 16-Week Semester Plan
This is a 16-week, week-by-week plan for a one-semester AP Macroeconomics course on roughly 50-minute periods. It follows the official College Board unit order and weights the calendar the way the exam does: Units 3, 4, and 5 carry the most points and get the most weeks, while Unit 1 stays lean. Each week lists the CED topics to cover, the matching EconLearn lesson plan, and honest notes on what drags and what to compress.
If you teach macro over a full year instead of a semester, stretch this plan by pausing on the graph-heavy weeks: Unit 3's AD-AS and Unit 4's two interest-rate markets are where extra days pay off most. The topic order does not change; you simply add practice, retrieval, and FRQ reps between the milestones. A full-year class should reach the end of Unit 6 by late March so April is free for the two review weeks before the May exam.
Every link in this guide is free and needs no login. EconLearn hosts lesson-plan pages for all twelve macro modules, interactive graph sandboxes you can project and manipulate live, a question bank filtered by module at /practice, draw-the-graph FRQ practice, guided graph walkthroughs, spaced-repetition flashcards, a full practice test, and a one-page cram sheet at /cram-sheet/ap-macroeconomics.
Use the weekly notes as a starting scaffold, not a script. The classroom mechanics named here (cold call, think-pair-share, whiteboard rounds, exit tickets) assume you will swap in your own examples; everything linked works tomorrow with no prep beyond opening the page.
| Week | Topic | CED | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Scarcity, opportunity cost, and the production possibilities curve | MACRO 1.1, MACRO 1.2 | Spend day one on scarcity and the PPC at the board, then have the class rebuild the curve at /sandbox/ppc and cold-call for the opportunity cost of moving between two points. Unit 1 is only 5 to 10 percent of the exam, so do not linger; two weeks is plenty. |
| 2 | Comparative advantage, gains from trade, and a supply-and-demand refresher | MACRO 1.3, MACRO 1.4, MACRO 1.5, MACRO 1.6 | Comparative advantage is where students stall every year, so drill output-versus-input tables with think-pair-share before moving on. Assign /practice/basic-macro-concepts as an exit ticket and keep the demand-and-supply review light, since those curves return inside AD-AS and FOREX. |
| 3 | GDP, the circular flow, limitations of GDP, real vs nominal, and the business cycle | MACRO 2.1, MACRO 2.2, MACRO 2.6, MACRO 2.7 | GDP counting rules (final goods, produced this year, inside the country) reward whiteboard rounds of counts-or-does-not-count. Pair the phases of the cycle with /sandbox/business-cycle and the ap-macro-business-cycle plan, and use /graph-walkthroughs for real-versus-nominal conversions. |
| 4 | Unemployment, inflation and price indices, and the costs of inflation | MACRO 2.3, MACRO 2.4, MACRO 2.5 | Unemployment types and CPI math are fast; the drag is students confusing frictional and structural, so run a rapid sorting cold call. Give the first full FRQ at the end of this week and grade it together on /frq-practice/draw so the class sees the rubric before it counts. |
| 5 | Aggregate demand and the spending and tax multipliers | MACRO 3.1, MACRO 3.2 | AD and the multipliers are the conceptual gate to the whole back half of the course. Derive the spending multiplier (1 over MPS) and the tax multiplier on the board, then have students predict AD shifts in /sandbox/adas; budget extra time because the MPC and MPS arithmetic trips up a third of the room. |
| 6 | Short-run and long-run aggregate supply, equilibrium, and output gaps | MACRO 3.3, MACRO 3.4, MACRO 3.5 | SRAS versus LRAS and output gaps are the single most tested graph, so slow down here even though the calendar is tight. Run whiteboard rounds drawing recessionary and inflationary gaps, and use /sandbox/adas to show self-correction shifting SRAS back to potential. |
| 7 | Short-run AD-AS changes, long-run self-adjustment, fiscal policy, and automatic stabilizers | MACRO 3.6, MACRO 3.7, MACRO 3.8, MACRO 3.9 | Fiscal policy is the payoff: trace spending and tax changes through AD to output, price level, and unemployment. Close Unit 3 with a graded test and a timed AD-AS FRQ, and assign /practice/fiscal-policy as the review-night set. |
| 8 | Financial assets, real vs nominal interest rates, money, and bank money creation | MACRO 4.1, MACRO 4.2, MACRO 4.3, MACRO 4.4 | Unit 4 is where students drown, so separate the two markets on day one: the money market uses the nominal rate, loanable funds uses the real rate. Teach money functions and the money multiplier (1 over the reserve ratio) with short numeric drills before any graph goes up. |
| 9 | The money market and the Fed's monetary policy tools | MACRO 4.5, MACRO 4.6 | The money market graph and the policy tools are high-yield; drill Fed-buys-bonds to the full chain (money supply right, nominal rate down, investment up, AD right). Have students run it live in /sandbox/monetary-policy and cold-call each link in the sequence. |
| 10 | The loanable funds market and the real interest rate | MACRO 4.7 | Loanable funds is short but students draw the wrong graph under pressure, so put it side by side with the money market and compare and contrast. Preview crowding out in /sandbox/loanable-funds, then give the Unit 4 test. |
| 11 | Short-run policy interactions, the Phillips curve, and money growth and inflation | MACRO 5.1, MACRO 5.2, MACRO 5.3 | Unit 5 is synthesis, not new graphs, so lean on what they know: map an AD shift onto the short-run Phillips curve at /sandbox/phillips-curve. The quantity theory and the vertical long-run Phillips curve go quickly if AD-AS is already solid. |
| 12 | Deficits and the national debt, crowding out, and economic growth | MACRO 5.4, MACRO 5.5, MACRO 5.6, MACRO 5.7 | Crowding out reuses the loanable funds graph and growth reuses LRAS and the PPC, so frame the week as connections rather than new content. Assign /practice/economic-growth and close Unit 5, the largest weight band on the exam, with a cumulative test. |
| 13 | Balance of payments, exchange rates, and the foreign exchange market | MACRO 6.1, MACRO 6.2, MACRO 6.3 | The foreign exchange graph appears on nearly every recent FRQ set, so give FOREX two full class days at /sandbox/exchange-rates. Drill the chain from interest rates to capital flows to appreciation to net exports until the class can run it cold. |
| 14 | Policy effects on exchange rates, net exports, and international capital flows | MACRO 6.4, MACRO 6.5, MACRO 6.6 | Finish the net-export feedback into AD and the capital-flow links, then test; /practice/international-trade covers the trade-side questions. Full-year note: if you are pacing to the May exam, reach this point by late March so April is open for the review structure below. |
| 15 | Cumulative review: timed practice test and graph reteach | MACRO 3.5, MACRO 4.5, MACRO 4.7, MACRO 6.3 | Review week one: assign a full /practice-test under timed conditions, then reteach the two weakest units from the results. Have students draw every core graph from memory on /frq-practice/draw and hand out /cram-sheet/ap-macroeconomics as the take-home. |
| 16 | Final review: FRQ rounds, vocabulary recall, and mixed MCQ | MACRO 3.8, MACRO 4.6, MACRO 5.2, MACRO 6.4 | Review week two: run /flashcards for vocabulary and formula recall, then do timed FRQ rounds on AD-AS, the money market, loanable funds, and FOREX. Spend the last two days on the graphs students still miss and one final mixed MCQ set from /practice-test. |
Teacher FAQ
- How do I adapt this for a block schedule?
- On a 90-minute block, combine two of these weekly rows into one week and use the second half of each block for the linked sandbox or practice set. The graph-heavy weeks (Unit 3 and Unit 4) are the exception: keep those at their own pace even on blocks, because AD-AS and the money-versus-loanable-funds distinction need spacing to stick.
- Can I use this plan for a full-year course instead of a semester?
- Yes. Keep the same unit order and topic sequence, and add FRQ reps, retrieval practice, and current-events applications between the milestones. Pace so you finish Unit 6 by late March, then run the two review weeks in April before the May exam.
- Can I swap the unit order, for example teach the Financial Sector before National Income?
- The CED order (AD-AS in Unit 3 before the Financial Sector in Unit 4) is deliberate: monetary policy in Unit 4 shifts AD, which students cannot analyze until they own the AD-AS model. Reordering within a unit is fine, but keep Unit 3 before Unit 4 and Unit 4 before Unit 5.
- When should students write their first full FRQ?
- End of Week 4, at the close of Unit 2. Grade it together against the rubric so students see how points are awarded before it affects a grade; the draw-the-graph tool at /frq-practice/draw is the fastest way to model a clean AD-AS or FOREX diagram on screen.
- What if I only have time to teach part of the course?
- Protect Units 3, 4, and 5; together they can be over 70 percent of the exam. If something has to give, compress Unit 1 to a few days and fold the Unit 6 exchange-rate graph into Unit 4's interest-rate work rather than dropping it, since FOREX appears on nearly every recent FRQ set.
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