Today was interesting we started with discussing the OCR - what is it? who is in charge of it? what do they do? we isolated the following three men as being important in the NZ economy they are the former Governor of the Reserve Bank Don Brash, the current Governor Allan Bollard, and the Finance Minister Bill English. Allan is responsible for ensuring our Inflation rate stays between 1-3%. the lever for this is the interest rates.
We spent time working on Inflation and what our students will need to be able to explain to pass this Achievement Standard. we started with the OCR at the top, and used the scenario of the interest rates increasing, what will that do to inflation? what will that do to our AD/AS Model. students will be required to explain the effects. we also needed to explain to our students if interest rates go up the exchange rate will also go up. students will be required to explain this and ensure they know what they are talking about and if possible provide a graph, students need to realise that just because a graph isn't asked for if you can provide one you are showing your understanding of economics.
After that we honed in on trade we didn't go to much into this but we discussed what was involved with the standard, Concepts and Definitions, Models (Price taker, two country model) and PPF, Statistics (BOP,TT and WIT) some of those are useful for a nerd moment and finally the policy's (Free Trade). we need to introduce and explain to the students what the price taker and two way model actually is, emphasizing NZ is a small country so we don't influence the World Price. Final discussion was on the graph, and the neatness and ability of students to reproduce a good graph will rest solely on us we need to set expectations early, neat, ruled lines, not to small, labeling at the bottom (especially higher levels were alot of things are happening on the one graph) arrows for shifts should always be horizontal. this was a very good aspect to understand and as i found on practicum if you Say it from the front of the class they think its gospel and it will end up on an exam, so may sure you practice what you preach.
Cant wait to be able to explain the above Graph.....
Andrew you are soooo on the ball with this blogging! Fantastic! Kelly
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