Skip to main content

Theory of the Firm - Booklet


I've been keenly exploring the booklet concept recently and decided to produce one for microeconomics! I'm really enjoying using this myself and hope you will find it useful too!

This booklet covers basic, core content for the 'theory of the firm' - primarily focused around understanding of cost and revenue diagrams. 

I am using the booklet:

- to reduce the time students spend copying notes - the core content is typed into the booklet, so students just draw the diagrams and annotate the text with their own additional notes/examples. 

- to aid student organisation - all the core diagrams are located in one place.

- alongside other activities - I am adding my own explanations, examples and further activities also (for example, I also gave students: a longer written article on diminishing returns; cost calculation exercises in tables; further notes and examples of economies of scale; a table of the characteristics of market structures etc). I may consider adding more of these elements to the booklet in the future. This is meant to be a core knowledge booklet though, not a complete lesson teaching booklet (it only contains a few questions for further thought/discussion- no practice questions or case studies for example).

- as a foundation - a further booklet to cover efficiency, objectives, curve shifting, adjustments from SR to LR etc is likely to follow.

- with my animated You Tube diagram videos - I play the video clip (which is silent and shows how to draw the diagram) and then talk over it to explain. This has been very useful as I can re-play diagrams multiple times over, and this has also been incredibly useful in enabling me to teach students remotely (I switch between projecting the booklet PDF and the You Tube clips). These clips can be embedded easily into Google Slides presentations. https://www.youtube.com/user/sarahpjonesify/videos

- to keep all students together - with various students out (for self isolation and other reasons), following through a booklet is helping to keep the class together.

- to aid retrieval practice - the final page contains a list which students can use to self-test, then can then check back over the booklet to find the correct diagrams/explanations. 

- to reduce cognitive load - I have carefully designed all diagrams to ensure labels are placed in appropriate places to avoid split attention and reduce extraneous cognitive load. 

- to support teaching of Edexcel Economics A Theme 3 - the content is fairly universal, although I may look to produce further versions to cover other aspects more prominent in other specifications (returns to scale for example).


Teacher booklet PDF download: Download here

Student booklet PDF download: Download here

Please feel free to use in your own teaching context (for example make paper copies for staff/students, upload to VLE/Classroom/Teams). Please seek permission before sharing more widely or publicly though. Thank you. 


I would love to hear your feedback on this - do drop me a DM or tweet - @JonesLearnUK - Thanks! :-)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Perfect your revision…

 Perfect your revision… …of perfect competition with this handy one page summary!  Download free here ! Retrieval / fill the gaps blank version here - use as worksheet, or for self-testing to improve memory! Canva Template Link: Edit the sheet to add your school logo, space for student name or score, colour, or whatever you like!  https://www.canva.com/design/DAGcmQJYp4Q/bGs-9zPq3-gf6RVQsP7qJg/view?utm_content=DAGcmQJYp4Q&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=publishsharelink&mode=preview Check out how to draw all the key diagrams for perfect competition on You Tube here !  For more coverage of Perfect Competition, check out my book on the topic. Available on Amazon, free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers!  https://amzn.eu/d/cJLGakE
Post a Comment
Read more

Become a JonesLearn Scholar…

Master A Level Economics with JonesLearn by becoming a JonesLearn Scholar.  Develop your skills and knowledge to the highest level, and achieve the grade you deserve. With over 20 years experience teaching economics, Sarah makes use of her extensive experience as teacher, Head of Department, examiner and tutor to provide high quality one-to-one and small group tuition. Her deep understanding of cognitive science, as well as the content of A Level Economics specifications and assessment methods, mean she is able to offer students clear explanations and highly effective methods to enable them to remember and use their knowledge over time.  - Improve understanding of all required topics. - Develop skills of application, analysis and evaluation to ensure top marks in examinations. - Learn techniques for answering multiple choice and calculation questions accurately. - Receive feedback on written work to find out how to improve. - Learn how to memorise all key knowledge using evide...
Post a Comment
Read more

Curriculum Conversations: A Visual Approach

 Curriculum Conversations: A Visual Approach Thoroughly grateful, as ever, to had have the opportunity to share some of my reading, my thinking and my work at the researchEd National Conference in London earlier this month!  Thanks so much if you came along!  I have been interested in visual (and other) approaches to solving problems since studying a module on group decision making in my degree, back in the early 2000’s! The knowledge and skills I developed at that time had laid somewhat dormant over the years that followed, but since I have more recently encountered further ideas and writing on dual coding, visual techniques and graphic organisation, I have begun to fuse together my interest and experience from the field of management with my improved understanding of the importance of visuals in communication and processing.  Discovery of this very recent article from Csaszar, Hinrichs and Heshmati (2024) was very pleasing to me. They draw together findings from pr...
Post a Comment
Read more