DBQ Assignment

Course: HS economics

Unit: Competitive markets, supply, and demand

U.S. Common Core Standards Assessed:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.1 - Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.2 - Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.7 - Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem.

Assignment Overview: Students analyze a variety of images and text excerpts from Tom Wainwright's "Narconomics" to answer scaffolding questions, illustrate market changes on supply and demand diagrams, and ultimately conduct a cost-benefit analysis that addresses the guiding questions, "Is disrupting the supply of coca at its source the best way to raise the price of cocaine? Do the benefits of doings this outweigh the costs?" This assignment is intended to follow an economics unit covering competitive market forces of supply and demand.

Variations in Instructional Approach: A teacher would be advised against just handing students this package of documents and "turning them loose" to complete it independently without further support. Rather, the teacher might begin by projecting the first series of documents to the class on the whiteboard and model a variety of pre-reading and active reading strategies to ensure students are reading and annotating the documents with a purpose. Students could be encourage to read and discuss the next sets of questions in pairs.

To incorporate movement and interpersonal, cooperative learning strategies into the lesson a teacher might print the individual documents and post them around the room to create a variety of "stations" which individuals, pairs, or small groups could rotate between and approach deconstructing and discussing each document together, while each ultimately completes the questions individually to ensure accountability for their learning.