The concepts below are the ones an AP Micro or Macro student meets. What changes is the order: students work the idea out first, and get the word for it second.
There is never enough of anything to go around. Students separate what they need from what they want, then take apart a company they already know to find the four ingredients inside it.
Every choice costs something you did not choose. Students put a number on that cost, meet the production possibilities frontier, and work out why two people who are each better at different things should trade.
The first full market. Both curves get built out of the room’s own answers, and then students find the single price that leaves nobody wanting — and what moves each curve.
From one market to a whole economy. Students follow a $20 hoodie all the way around the loop — households sell labour, firms pay wages, wages come back as spending — then meet GDP and watch a recession hit.
Not every market works the same way. Students sort real Canadian businesses from perfect competition through to monopoly, then find the thing that actually decides it: how hard it is to get in.
When your best move depends on what someone else does. Students play the prisoner’s dilemma before it has a name, then hunt for the move that wins whatever the other side picks.
Every session opens with a recap and covers one idea start to finish. Arriving in week four is not a problem.
