- Start from the number of weeks you can actually teach, not the number of weeks on the school calendar. Once you take out induction, mocks, lost days and final revision, a 38-week run-up to the exams often leaves about 30 weeks for new content.
- Decide on your sequence early. Micro then macro is the most common route for AP, Cambridge 9708 and IB, but you can still bring old topics back every week.
- Plan in two-lesson blocks: one lesson to teach and model, one to apply and practise. It makes a full year much easier to manage.
- Put retrieval practice, exit tickets, chapter tests and mocks into the plan from day one. Assessment is part of the structure, not something you add at the end.
- Below you will find a sample 30-week outline you can copy, adapt and share with your department.
You have a new timetable, a class list, a syllabus document of forty-odd pages and a head of department asking for your scheme of work by the end of the month. You know the economics. What you do not have is the time to turn a syllabus into a calendar, week by week, with every test, mock and revision lesson in the right place.
Most economics teachers end up planning one week ahead. It works until about February. Then a mock week and a few lost days push everything back, and the last three topics get squeezed into a fortnight in April.
A year plan prevents that. It does not have to be perfect, and it will change. But a clear outline of what you teach each week, and when you check whether it has stuck, is the single most useful planning document you can have. This guide walks through how to build one for AP Microeconomics and Macroeconomics, Cambridge International AS and A Level Economics (9708) and IB Diploma Economics, with a sample 30-week outline you can adapt.
Thirty chapters, sixty lesson plans and 670 editable slides that fit a 30-week plan: the Economics Teacher Bundle.See the pack · $49
Why a year plan matters more than a perfect lesson
What students remember in May depends on how often they met each idea and how often they had to recall it. That is decided at the level of the year, not the lesson. Barak Rosenshine’s summary of research on effective teaching makes the point. His first principle is to begin a lesson with a short review of previous learning; his tenth is to engage students in weekly and monthly review[1]. You cannot do weekly and monthly review well if you do not know which topics came before and which come next. A year plan is what makes review possible.
Step 1: Count your real teaching weeks
The most common planning mistake is to divide the syllabus by the number of weeks in the school year. The school year is not the teaching year. Start with the weeks between the first day of term and the first exam, not counting holidays, and then take out everything that is not new teaching.
| Item | Weeks | Running total |
|---|---|---|
| Term weeks before the first exam (holidays excluded) | 38 | 38 |
| Induction, baseline test, setting up routines | −1 | 37 |
| Mock exam window (school-wide, usually January) | −2 | 35 |
| Days lost to events, trips, short weeks and illness, added together | −1 | 34 |
| Final revision before the exam | −4 | 30 |
| Weeks for new content | 30 |
Your numbers will be different, so do this with your own calendar. In schools with a September start and May exams, the figure can be closer to 26 or 28 weeks. Either way, the number of new-content weeks is what you divide your syllabus by.
Next, turn weeks into lessons. With four 60-minute lessons a week, 30 weeks gives 120 lessons. With five, it gives 150. That is your real budget. Compare it with the published guidance for your course:
- Cambridge 9708: the 2026–2028 syllabus gives about 180 guided learning hours for AS Level and about 360 for the full A Level[4]. Guided learning hours include all teacher-directed time, not just timetabled lessons, so 120 lessons a year will feel tight. That is normal, and it is a reason to plan carefully rather than a reason to panic.
- IB Economics: the IB recommends 150 teaching hours at SL and 240 at HL across the two-year programme, including 20 hours for the internal assessment portfolio[5].
- AP: the College Board does not set a fixed hour count, but AP Microeconomics and AP Macroeconomics are each designed as the equivalent of a one-semester college course[3]. Many schools teach Micro in one semester and Macro in the other, which makes timing very tight; others teach one per year.
Step 2: Choose your sequence (micro first, or interleave?)
Every course starts with the same basic ideas: scarcity, choice, opportunity cost and how economies allocate resources. After that you have a real choice to make.
Micro then macro is the most common route: supply and demand gives students a model they reuse everywhere, and most syllabuses are arranged that way. You do not have to choose between blocks and mixing, though. Teach topics in blocks, but mix old topics into starters, homework and quizzes. A Week 20 starter on fiscal policy can include one question on price elasticity of demand from Week 5. That keeps earlier content alive without breaking up the teaching sequence.
What each course expects
| Course | How the content is organised | What this means for your plan |
|---|---|---|
| AP Microeconomics | Six units: Basic Economic Concepts; Supply and Demand; Production, Cost, and the Perfect Competition Model; Imperfect Competition; Factor Markets; Market Failure and the Role of Government[3] | Units 2 and 3 carry the largest share of the multiple-choice section, so give them generous time. |
| AP Macroeconomics | Six units: Basic Economic Concepts; Economic Indicators and the Business Cycle; National Income and Price Determination; Financial Sector; Long-Run Consequences of Stabilization Policies; Open Economy, International Trade and Finance[3] | The financial sector and monetary policy are often rushed. Protect at least three weeks for them. |
| Cambridge 9708 | Six AS topics, from Basic economic ideas and resource allocation to International economic issues, then five A Level topics that go back to the same areas (the price system and microeconomy, government intervention, the macroeconomy, macro policy, international issues) in more depth[4] | The AS year covers the whole micro-to-international journey once. The A Level year revisits it, so build in links back to AS work. |
| IB Economics | Four units: Introduction to economics; Microeconomics; Macroeconomics; The global economy, plus an internal assessment portfolio of three commentaries[5] | Plan the commentaries alongside the units they draw on, not all in the final term. HL content needs extra weeks within each unit. |
Always check the current syllabus or course description for your exam session before you finalise the plan. Exam boards revise their documents, and a topic that moved from AS to A Level (or the other way round) will throw out your timing.
Step 3: A sample 30-week outline
Here is a one-year outline that moves from micro to macro to international economics. It fits an AS year of Cambridge 9708, a year that covers both AP Micro and AP Macro, or the first-year core of IB Economics (with HL extension added inside the relevant weeks). Treat it as a starting point: move rows, merge weeks or split them to fit your course.
| Week | Topic | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Scarcity, choice, opportunity cost, production possibility curves | Baseline quiz; exit tickets |
| 2 | Economic systems, resource allocation, positive and normative statements | Exit tickets |
| 3 | Demand and its determinants | Retrieval starter (Weeks 1–2) |
| 4 | Supply and market equilibrium | Diagram quiz |
| 5 | Price elasticity of demand | Chapter test 1 (Weeks 1–4) |
| 6 | Income, cross and supply elasticities | Calculation worksheet |
| 7 | Consumer and producer surplus; taxes, subsidies, price controls | Retrieval starter (Weeks 3–6) |
| 8 | Production and costs in the short run | Exit tickets |
| 9 | Long-run costs, revenue and profit | Chapter test 2 (Weeks 5–8) |
| 10 | Perfect competition | Diagram quiz |
| 11 | Monopoly | Short essay plan |
| 12 | Oligopoly and monopolistic competition | End-of-term test (Weeks 1–11) |
| 13 | Factor markets and labour markets | Exit tickets |
| 14 | Market failure: externalities | Data response question |
| 15 | Public goods, merit and demerit goods, information failure | Retrieval starter (mixed micro) |
| 16 | Government failure; income distribution | Chapter test 3 (Weeks 13–15) |
| — | Mock exam window (not counted) | Mid-year exam covering all micro |
| 17 | Circular flow; measuring GDP | Mock feedback lesson and re-teach |
| 18 | Unemployment and inflation | Calculation worksheet (index numbers) |
| 19 | Business cycle; aggregate demand | Exit tickets |
| 20 | Aggregate supply and macroeconomic equilibrium | Diagram quiz |
| 21 | The multiplier and fiscal policy | Chapter test 4 (Weeks 17–20) |
| 22 | Money, banks and money creation | Retrieval starter (mixed micro and macro) |
| 23 | Central banks and monetary policy | Data response question |
| 24 | Supply-side policies; the Phillips curve | Exit tickets |
| 25 | Economic growth and development | Chapter test 5 (Weeks 21–24) |
| 26 | Deficits, debt and long-run effects of policy | Short essay |
| 27 | Comparative advantage and the gains from trade | Calculation worksheet |
| 28 | Protectionism | Retrieval starter (mixed year) |
| 29 | The balance of payments | Exit tickets |
| 30 | Exchange rates | Chapter test 6 (Weeks 25–30) |
| R1–R4 | Final revision: weakest topics first, then past papers under timed conditions | End-of-year exam or second mock |
Look at the right-hand column: something is checked every week, a chapter test comes about every four weeks, and two big exams sit at the middle and end of the year.
Step 4: Build in retrieval practice, exit tickets and mocks
Assessment in a year plan does two jobs. It tells you what students have learned (so you can re-teach), and it helps them learn (because pulling information out of memory strengthens it).
Retrieval practice
Rosenshine reports that secondary classes given weekly quizzes did better on final exams than classes given only one or two quizzes[1]. For an economics class, the practical lesson is simple: short, low-stakes quizzes beat “read over your notes”.
Put a five-minute retrieval starter at the beginning of most lessons. Rosenshine suggests daily review of about five to eight minutes, with the previous week’s work reviewed each week and the previous month’s work every fourth week[1]. In the outline above, that is what the “retrieval starter (Weeks 3–6)” entries are for.
- Define opportunity cost. (Week 1)
- Price falls from $10 to $8 and quantity demanded rises from 100 to 130. Calculate PED using the simple percentage method. (Week 5) Answer: +30% ÷ −20% = −1.5, so demand is price elastic.
- Draw a diagram showing the effect of a specific tax on a good with inelastic demand. Who bears most of the tax? (Week 7) Answer: consumers.
- Give one reason why a firm in perfect competition earns only normal profit in the long run. (Week 10)
Exit tickets
An exit ticket is one to three questions at the end of a lesson, answered on paper or a mini-whiteboard. It takes three minutes and tells you whether to move on or go back. This is formative assessment in the sense Black and Wiliam described in “Inside the Black Box”: evidence of learning that the teacher actually uses to change what happens next[2]. The Education Endowment Foundation’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit rates feedback as high impact for very low cost, based on extensive evidence, with an average of about six months’ additional progress[6]. The feedback only helps if you act on it, so put a re-teach slot into your plan after each chapter test.
Mocks
The mid-year mock is most useful when it covers everything taught so far and is marked to the real mark scheme. Plan the week after the mock as a feedback week: one lesson on the most common errors, one lesson of corrections and re-attempts. In the sample outline, Week 17 starts macro and also includes that feedback.
What is inside the Economics Teacher Bundle
- 30 chapters, which fit a 30-week plan like the one above at one chapter a week
- 670 editable slides with speaker notes
- 60 lesson plans: two 60-minute lessons per chapter
- Worksheets with answer keys, chapter tests with mark schemes and three exit tickets per chapter
- Mid-year and end-of-year exams, plus a 140-diagram bank
- The Economics Made Simple textbook (914 pages) and 450 practice questions, for AP Micro and Macro, Cambridge 9708 and IB Economics
Step 5: Plan lessons in two-lesson blocks
Planning 120 separate lessons is exhausting. Planning 30 weeks of two-lesson blocks is much easier, and it works well with how economics is learned: first you understand a model, then you use it.
| Block | Lesson A: teach and model | Lesson B: apply and practise |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | Retrieval quiz on earlier topics (5–8 minutes) | Quick recap of Lesson A in three questions |
| Main | New content in small steps; build the diagram live; worked example; guided practice | Data response question, calculation set or essay plan using the model |
| Check | Mini-whiteboard questions to the whole class | Independent practice while you circulate |
| End | Exit ticket | Exit ticket or self-marked practice |
If you have four lessons a week, each week holds two blocks: one block of new content and one block for extension, HL material, past-paper practice or re-teaching. If you have five, the fifth lesson becomes your flexible lesson for catching up when the calendar slips.
- Lesson A: retrieval starter on supply and demand shifts; define PED; model the calculation with one worked example; students complete three guided calculations; whole-class check on interpreting the sign and size; exit ticket (“PED is −0.4. Is demand elastic or inelastic? What happens to total revenue if price rises?” Answer: inelastic; total revenue rises.).
- Lesson B: three-question recap; a data response on a cinema or petrol price change; a short paragraph on why a government might tax goods with inelastic demand; chapter test 1 set for homework or next lesson.
Step 6: Adapt the plan for a department
A department plan needs a few extra things.
- One shared assessment calendar. Every class sits the same chapter tests in the same week. This makes moderation possible.
- Common mark schemes and a moderation meeting. After each chapter test, each teacher brings three scripts (high, middle, low) and the team agrees marks. Twenty minutes is enough.
- Flexible weeks marked clearly. Teachers move at different speeds. Mark two or three weeks each term as “catch-up or extension” so nobody falls behind the shared calendar.
- Clear ownership for split classes. If two teachers share a class, give one micro and one macro, or split by topic. Avoid both teachers teaching “a bit of everything”.
- A review at the end of the year. Which weeks overran? Which topics did the mock show were weak? Change the plan while you still remember.
Common planning mistakes (and how to avoid them)
How a ready-made scheme and pack can save you hours
Writing a scheme of work and all the resources to go with it is a big job. To give a sense of scale, here is an illustration (not a measured result): if building one lesson from scratch, with slides, a worksheet and an exit ticket, takes you about two hours, then 60 lessons take about 120 hours. If adapting a ready-made lesson takes about 30 minutes, the same 60 lessons take about 30 hours. That is a difference of around 90 hours in this example. Your own figures will vary, but the gap is usually large.
What a resource pack cannot do is know your calendar. You still need to count your teaching weeks, place your mocks and decide your sequence. The pack gives you the lessons; the plan in this post tells you when to teach them.
Teach more than one subject? All five teacher packs and every book for $79 (was $219).Complete Teacher Bundle · $79
If you want the lessons that sit underneath a plan like this, the Economics Teacher Bundle has 30 chapters with two lesson plans each, editable slides, worksheets, tests, exit tickets and mid-year and end-of-year exams. Every file is editable Word or PowerPoint, with a print-ready PDF. You can download the free sample and try a full chapter with your class before you decide.
Frequently asked questions
How many weeks should I allow for final revision?
Three to four weeks is a good target for a one-year course leading to a public exam. Spend the first part on your students’ weakest topics (use the mock results) and the last part on timed past papers. If your calendar is very tight, two weeks is the minimum worth protecting.
Should I teach micro before macro for IB Economics?
Most teachers do, because the IB guide is organised that way and micro models support macro thinking. Some prefer to start macro early to give more time for the global economy unit. Either route works if every unit has enough time and you plan the internal assessment commentaries alongside the units they draw on.
What if I fall behind the plan?
That is what the flexible weeks are for. If you are still behind, merge two related topics (for example, the two elasticity weeks), cut extension work rather than core content, and never cut the revision weeks. Update the plan as you go so it stays honest.
Can a whole department use one Economics Teacher Bundle?
Yes. The licence covers one teacher or one school department, so colleagues in the same economics department can share and adapt the files. See the teacher packs guide for how to set them up.
References
- Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know. American Educator, 36(1), 12–19, 39. aft.org
- Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2), 139–148. kappanonline.org
- College Board. AP Microeconomics and AP Macroeconomics: Course Overviews and Course and Exam Descriptions. AP Central (Microeconomics); AP Central (Macroeconomics)
- Cambridge International. Cambridge International AS and A Level Economics 9708: Syllabus for examination in 2026, 2027 and 2028. cambridgeinternational.org
- International Baccalaureate Organization. Diploma Programme Economics: higher level subject brief. ibo.org
- Education Endowment Foundation. Teaching and Learning Toolkit: Feedback. educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk
