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Fall
1999 Economics in Action Recipient
Dona
Phillips
The mission of the Missouri Council on Economic
Education (MCEE) is to promote and improve economic literacy for
educators and students. This increases their understanding of our
economic system and equips them to function as responsible citizens
who make informed personal and public policy decisions. This issue
recognizes Dona Phillips for her outstanding ability to integrate
economics into her curriculum at a variety of grade levels. Dona
teaches in the Lawson School District. She is a multi-grade teacher,
currently teaching 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade gifted classes. Dona also
teaches 7th and 8th grade at-risk English courses.
Dona has been very active with MCEE incorporating
economics into her classroom. She is an Economic Advocate for the UMKC
Center for Economic Education. Last April Dona displayed her students
economic achievements at the MCEE banquet at Park Place Hotel in
Kansas City. She showcased student created materials that highlighted
Community Publishing, The Stock Market Game, and Economics by the
Books.
Dona selected the Stock Market Game as the
cornerstone for teaching economics to her 7th and 8th grade English
classes. Her SMG unit plan involves the applications of reading,
research, computers skills, advertising, marketing, economics, and
cooperative efforts used in the business world to develop and sell a
product to customers. The English students read individual stories and
lessons from Learning from the Market; and Integrating The
Stock Market Game Across the Curriculum. These lessons emphasized
oral reading, discussion, writing journals, reading tables and graphs,
content reading from the newspaper, writing letters to companies, and
vocabulary development. The students tracked their purchases during
the games on forms that Dona created. They used Internet sites to
research companies, wrote letters to businesses asking for portfolios,
and created Power Point programs about the companies. The students
read, researched, and summarized articles from the business section of
the Kansas City Star and used economic vocabulary introduced in
the lessons.
Dona also incorporates economic ideas and
principles into the curriculum for her 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade gifted
classes. Her fourth grade class identified the capital, human, and
natural resources in a fictitious community and then applied the ideas
to their own community of Lawson. The students distributed information
surveys to 40 businesses, collected and analyzed the information, and
used this data to write a book about 30 of the businesses. The
students were responsible for the writing, editing, assembling, and
marketing of their book.
After studying the concepts of goods, services,
unlimited wants, scarcity and choices her 2nd grade classes wrote a
book for the elementary school entitled Wants from A to Z. The
students prepared to write their book by studying poems from Where
the Sidewalk Ends: "Orchestra," "Pancakes?",
"Hector the Collector," "Point of View,"
"Poor Angus," and "Afraid of the Dark."
The students discovered similarities and
differences of consumers by reading A Country Far Away and In
a People House. Both 2nd and 3rd graders wrote and illustrated
books about the similarities and differences of consumers throughout
the world.
Dona has demonstrated great creative ability as she
has successfully integrated economic terms and concepts into a wide
range of curricular areas. The MCEE salutes Dona Phillips of Lawson,
Missouri for her dedication to and creativity in teaching economics
across the curriculum. |
