This course is one in a large series from The Institute for Excellence in Writing to use with their "Teaching Writing: Structure and Style" program. If you are not familiar with that program or have not used it before, you will probably find this economics curriculum difficult to use. It assumes familiarity with IEW and their foundational course.

This course takes the student through 23 lessons on economics using the writing concepts taught through IEW. The economics lessons cover a range of topics, from Opportunity Cost to the Politics of Global Warming to Communism vs. Capitalism to Economic Recovery. The writing lessons include everything from note taking to summarizing to creative writing to reviews and critiques. Each lesson gives check sheets in three different levels for various levels of writing skill. Thus, the course could be used simultaneously by students in varied grade levels. Source texts are included in the manual as the reference material the students are using to learn the economic concepts and to develop their writing assignment for each lesson.

This course would make an excellent foundation from which to build a high school level economics course. I don't believe the concepts covered in this course, in and of themselves, would be sufficient for a high school credit in economics, but with some supplementation it would be a great base. I would recommend this for anyone looking for a guide through economics instruction or wanting to supplement their economics course with some good critical thinking and writing assignments. It would also work well without supplementation as a quick introduction to economics for middle school students.

Product review by Kim Kargbo, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, December 2010