Alabama Social Studies SS24.E.4d
The Standard
- SS24.E.4
- Draw conclusions about how supply, demand, and price interact in a market economy.
Illustrate and explain how supply and demand determine equilibrium price and quantity and how price movements eliminate shortages and surpluses.
2024 Alabama Course of Study: Social Studies
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students draw supply and demand curves from a price and quantity table and find where they meet. They label shortages and surpluses at other prices, then explain how price changes bring the quantities back together.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student identifies the equilibrium price and quantity where the curves cross. At another price, they calculate how many units are missing or left over and predict which way the price will move.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may call a shortage a surplus when buyers want more than sellers offer. Some think a price change shifts the supply curve, rather than changing the quantity offered along it.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: For strawberries, at $2 buyers want 80 baskets and sellers offer 40; at $3 both want 60; at $4 buyers want 40 and sellers offer 80. Name the equilibrium price and quantity, then explain which way price moves at $2 and $4.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs lemonade cards with prices $1, $2, $3, buyer quantities 90, 60, 30, and seller quantities 30, 60, 90; plot and mark equilibrium.
Ask: At $1, 90 students want lemonade but sellers offer 30 cups. Why might sellers raise the price?
Play price referee: announce $3 lemonade, 30 cups wanted and 90 offered; teams call out the surplus and predict the price change.
Show a grocery store clearance sticker on overripe bananas; ask why the store cut the price and what might happen to sales.
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Related Standards
- SS24.E.4
Draw conclusions about how supply, demand, and price interact in a market economy.
- SS24.E.4b
Apply the law of supply and demand to everyday consumer and business decisions.
- SS24.E.4c
Explain how prices serve as incentives in a market economy, and how factors other than price cause changes in supply and demand.
- SS24.2.5
Explain how scarcity influences supply and demand.
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